By the second decade of the nineteenth century, the Hudson's Bay Company had become a dominant presence in northwestern Montana, bartering trade goods for furs with the Kootenai, Pend d'Oreille, and Salish people. In 1812, the company built a trading post on the Clark Fork River near the mouth of Thompson River, then relocated it to a more accessible site very near here by the early 1820s. The post consisted of two dwellings, a store, and a horse corral, and for more than twenty years Flathead House was an important trading post along the lower Clark Fork River. After the establishment of the 49th parallel as the international boundary between the United States and Great Britain in 1846, the British closed Flathead House in 1847. In November 1824, the American mountain man Jedediah Smith and seven companions unexpectedly arrived there. Under John McLoughlin's leadership, the Hudson's Bay Company had worked for years to keep American fur trappers out of the Oregon country west of the continental divide, and company manager Peter Skene Ogden called Smith's arrival "that damn'd all cursed day." His appearance at the remote post signaled the beginning of the end of a company policy that had stripped much of western Montana of its beaver in an effort to keep Americans out of the territory.