William Sublette

Who was William Sublette?

William Lewis Sublette born near Stamford, Lincoln County, Kentucky on September 21, 1798, died on July 23, 1845 in Pittsburg was a fur trapper, pioneer and mountain man, who, with his brothers after 1823, became an agent of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company (and later one of its owners), exploiting the riches of the Oregon Country, which helped settle the best routes later improved into the Oregon Trail.

He was one of five Sublette brothers prominent in the western fur trade: William, Milton, Andrew, Pinkney, and Solomon. Sublette was one of the leaders among the American mountain men pushing hard against the British companies active in the American fur trade in the Pacific Northwest and against the American Fur Company trappers in the high Rockies and other Incorporated territories of the United States.

He retired from high-risk trapping activities, venturing near hostile Amerindians, after being wounded at the Rendezvous of 1832 in the Battle of Pierre's Hole, which, some accounts claim, he hotheadedly triggered in his actions prior to the gun battle. After recuperating over a year back in St. Louis, he returned to the uplands and founded Fort William, later Fort Laramie, in the foothills east of the South Pass; the fort commanded the last eastern stream crossing at the foot of the last ascent to the floor of South Pass. That was the only route readily navigable by wagons over the continental divide.