Between the years of 1828 and 1867, the Upper Missouri River's most important fur trade post was the Fort Union Trading Post. It was here that the Assiniboine, as well as six other Northern Plains Indian Tribes, met to exchange buffalo robe and other smaller burs for goods such as beads, blankets, guns, and cloth. On average, Fort Union traded one hundred thousand dollars in goods and more than twenty-five thousand buffalo robes each year.
Every year, the Fort Union Trading Post Historic Site hosts Rendezvous, a Nineteenth Century Fur Trade Fair. The annual event is the fort's largest event, featuring an array of period crafts, music, and arts. Rendezvous is the finest fur trade fair in the upper Missouri region. More than 100 re-enactors from throughout the United States, as well as Canada, come to demonstrate traditional lifeways and skills each year in June.
In the decades following 1867, very little evidence of the trading post remained visible after passing crews of steamboats and the Army razed Fort Union. However, fur trade historians, farmers, and residents of the nearby communities of Williston, Mondak, and others knew where the post once stood. Some of these people recognized the national significance of the site, while some of them didn't. For most of them, the demands of daily life took up all of their attention.
Around the early 1900's, farmers began to surface evidence of a wide variety of buried artifacts, including remains of hand-forged tools, buttons, shell casings, building materials, glass beads, clay pipe fragments, and even human and bison bones. History enthusiasts and local residents explored the grounds over the years where Fort Union stood.
Gravel miners and undermined and unearthed the remaining foundation of Fort Union's southwest bastion by 1936. This caused local residents to raise money to purchase the site. Two years later, the state acquired the land that included the remains of the fort, designating it as a state historic site. Congress established the Fort Union National Historic Site in 1966. The Fort Union that visitors can tour today, however, wouldn't exist for an additional twenty-five years. In 1968, archeologists began exploratory excavation in preparation to accurately restore the site.
The significance and value of the museum at Fort Union National Historic Site lies in what people can learn from the site's artifacts. What volunteer, student, and professional excavators unearthed and documented revealed much more than just the historic foundations of the current Fort Union. The stories behind these discovered artifacts teach visitors about the trading post, the fur trade, those who worked there and their families, the Native American tribes of the region, and both the human-built and natural environment in which they worked and lived.
For example, bones from animals such as wolves, bison, dogs, and bears, indicate what domestic and wild animals the people traded for furs and food back then. Guns, knives, and arrowheads, as well as items like ceramic plates and the largest collection of trade beads in the country help piece together what these people used to adapt to the area's conditions and challenges with new peoples. While at the museum at Fort Union, visitors can explore exhibits, watch blacksmiths work, and speak with a trader.
15550 Highway 1804, Williston, ND, Phone: 701-572-9083
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