Encounter at Mountain Green

Tags

British, Historic Markers, Ogden, Trappers

Peter Skene Ogden – Mountain man and trapper, for when Ogden City, North Ogden, Ogden River, Ogden Valley and Mount Ogden were named. Mormon colonizer Brigham Young first proposed that Ogden City be named for Ogden in the year 1850.

Encounter at Mountain Green or Deserter Point

The only hostile encounter between American and British furtrappers — known to history as the encounter at Mountain Green or Deserter Point — occurred in this area between May 23 and 25, 1825. Peter Skene Ogden, one of the most capable and successful brigade leaders of the British Hudson’s Bay Company, camped here after completing an extra-ordinarily successful six day hunt in Ogden’s Hole, the mountain valley located approximately 8 miles north of this site. During that hunt Ofden’s brigade, consisting of 131 persons (including trappers’ squaws and half-breed children), 268 horses and 352 traps, took over 80 prime beaver per day. The brigade’s assignment to this area by Hudson’s Bay officials was part of a determined British policy to make the Oregon Territory unattractive to American trappers by removing all the beaver.

Camped within 100 years of Ogden’s camp was a rowdy bunch of American free trappers who resented the British trappers presence on so-called “American soil.” Under the vocal leadership of Johnson Gardner 25 Americans and 14 Deserters from Ogden’s brigade, all well armed, rode into Ogden’s camp, demanded the removal of the British from American territory, declared freedom and protection to Ogden’s brigade members who would like to join the Americans and offered $3.50 per pound for their pelts which happened to be 8 times the price paid by Hudson’s Bay Company. After two days of such attractive inducements Ogden lost 23 of his free trappers and on 700 pelts to the Americans. To avoid a more extended mutiny and a possible shoot-out with the Americans Ogden broke camp and returned north by the same route he had come. No Hudson’s Bay trapper ever penetrated south of this point.

The irony of this event and the conflicting territorial claims of the American and British trappers was that they were south of Jointly occupied Oregon Territory which lay north of the 42nd parallel. In 1825 all present at this site were trespassers on Mexican Territory which wouldn’t became American until the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.