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A Mountain Men Adventure

Zachary Dulman
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Mountain men on a  trapping expedition 

 

The exhibit is divided into four sections. “Mountain Men”, the exhibit’s first section, offers a general overview of the elements that are key to the exhibit and important background knowledge about the lived experiences of Colorado’s nineteenth century fur traders, the mountain men. It provides a timeline of the Colorado fur trade, maps of relevant regions, gear that the mountain men (men who trapped fur in the mountains) took with them, and highlights some of the most notable of these mountain men. One of these famous mountain men was Jim Beckwourth. His adventures highlight the dangers that came from living a life in the mountains. One of these adventures was a trip to an outpost in Missouri with a friend. They had no horses, so they were forced to travel on foot. By the ninth day, they had run out of all food and only had coffee and sugar left. They would have certainly died of starvation and dehydration if it wasn’t for two Native Americans who found them the next morning. These harsh conditions were not exclusive to Beckwourth, as all these mountain men faced peril in order to reap the lucrative benefits of fur trapping.

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The second section, “Trade Routes,” is devoted to the numerous trade routes that connected Bent’s Fort to the rest of the world. It has a large interactive map that goes into detail about the flow of goods to and from the fort and contains an in-depth explanation of the main commodities transported along the trade routes. The interactive map is crucial to understanding how an isolated fort on the frontier of American territory played such an integral role in the global economy. By clicking on the main trade routes, further information is provided regarding the global flow of goods between societies. For example, the road called El Camino Real linked Bent’s Fort to Mexico City. Traders at the fort sent kettles, guns and blankets in exchange for silver, sugar and chocolate from Mexico. In addition, overseas goods from London often

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The trade routes that connected Bent's Fort to the global economy

arrived through ports like New York and New Orleans. Thus, Bent’s Fort also was connected via these ports across the Atlantic to many European countries. By presenting this information in the interactive manner on the map, visitors can see the full extent to which the isolated Bent’s Fort was truly a cosmopolitan center of trade.

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Fictional characters, based on real people, who would have frequented Bent's Fort

The fourth section titled “A Day in the Life” illustrates the lives of three people who, although fictional, are based on real people that lived in and around Bent’s Fort. Lt. Micah B. Ewing, a member of the US Army Corp of Topographical Engineers, Josepfa Tafoya, a Mexican spy pretending to be a worker at the fort, and Cedric Gerard, a fur trapper seeking permanent employment, allow visitors to learn more about the difficulties and opportunities of life at the isolated fort. Taking a closer look at Cedric Gerard shows both the perils of trapping and the opportunity that Bent’s Fort presented. Frostbite ridden, his horse stolen, and forced to hide his beaver pelts, Cedric barely made it to Bent’s Fort in desperate need of shelter and a job. He was itching to get out of freelance fur trapping and instead to work for Bent’s Fort. He was able to

get a job hunting buffalo, which gave him more security and safety than the harsh trapping world.

 

The exhibit’s interactive dynamic, along with the mix of different mediums of multimedia certainly catches the visitor’s eye. The way in which History Colorado subtly embedded videos and expanded texts and pictures within maps and dioramas made the exhibit much more layered. This turned the exhibit into an “adventure,” in which the visitor needs to explore every inch of each section and watch every video in order to fully understand the narrative. The interactions that the visitor has within each section of the exhibit creates an exciting experience in which the viewer is more inclined to explore and understand the topics, instead of briskly glancing through the sections. An exhibit with too many pages or sections becomes overwhelming and leaves the visitor not knowing where to begin, so camouflaging the videos and additional information as “activities” creates a much more enjoyable experience. Despite being fully virtual, the exhibit captivates its audience as if it were in person. The exhibit does a fantastic job at explaining the complex American fur trade and how activities surrounding Bent’s Fort had extremely important global ramifications.

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