Patrick Wilde’s History of Bear Lake Valley: From Fur Trappers to Modern Times provides an overview of the shifting human geography of the high basin across two centuries. Wilde chronicles the early nineteenth-century mountain man era, focusing on the historic Rocky Mountain Fur Company rendezvous held along the shores of Bear Lake in 1827 and 1828 where figures like Jedediah Smith and William Sublette traded with regional tribes. The text details the subsequent passage of thousands of emigrants along the Oregon Trail and Sublette Cutoff through the Bear River corridor, analyzing the 1860s transition to permanent Mormon pastoral and agricultural colonization across Paris, Montpelier, Dingle, Fish Haven, and Pegram.

Bear Lake (Idaho and Utah) History, Bear Lake County (Idaho) History, Bear Lake Valley (Idaho and Utah) History, Dingle (Idaho), Fish Haven (Idaho), Fur trade Idaho History, History, Montpelier (Idaho), Oregon Trail Idaho History, Paris (Idaho), Pegram (Idaho), Rendezvous (Fur trade) History

Includes bibliographical references and historical route maps.

Includes bibliographical references and historical route maps.