In May of 1832, Captain Benjamin Bonneville left Fort Osage, Missouri, with an expedition of one hundred and ten men and twenty wagons bound for the Rocky Mountain West. After arriving in the Green River Valley, he ordered immediate construction of a fort on the west bank of the river. Although some uncertainty surrounds his intent, historians believe he meant it to serve as a trading establishment and military outpost showing the British that Americans were in the West to stay. Called “Fort Nonsense” and “Bonneville’s Folly” because of its poor location, it was soon abandoned as the severity of long Wyoming winters became apparent. Even so, it held a strategic position in the heart of the Rocky Mountain trapping system, serving in 1833 as the center of trading activity for the annual rendezvous and as storage for the 1836 Rendezvous. Completed in September 1832, the fort was one of the first permanent structures built by whites in Wyoming. It was made of cottonwood pickets a foot or more in diameter and about fifteen feet long, enclosed an area about eighty feet square, and had blockhouses diagonally opposite each other. At least one interior structure housed a forge that saw extensive use during the fort’s occupation. In 1989, an archeological survey at the site, undertaken as part of Wyoming’s Centennial celebration projects, found a well defined living surface, located the external walls, and investigated the forge area, showing active and extensive blacksmithing. Numerous early 1800s artifacts were unearthed, demonstrating the site’s archeological significance and its historic contribution to the Fur Trade Era. The location and archeological remains are listed as a National Historic Place, and the artifacts are exhibited and interpreted at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming.