America's First Multimillionaire

a place where rugged cliffs rise up through the Prairie like the spiny skeletons of giant ancient creatures members of the Sioux were the first to name these formations they called them maca Sica or land bad today people travel south dakota's Badlands from around the world just to see these cliffs eroded out of the soft soil deposits on the Prairie floor deposits laid down over 28 million years ago but are still being worn away by wind and water at an average rate of an inch a year making it one of the fastest eroding landscapes on earth flying over this strangely seductive but desolate landscape it's easy to see why the Sioux called them what they did and why French fur trappers who arrived here in the early 1800s noted that this part of what's now South Dakota was a bad land to travel through but that didn't stop them from coming in the early 19th century vivre repels for one of the world's hottest commodities the dense fur of these animals was used to make felt which was shaped into top hats that were all the rage in Europe at the time many trappers and traders came here hoping to get rich and some succeeded one even became the richest man in America his name was John Jacob Astor in 1828 he received permission to build a trading post here on the banks of the Missouri River Aster's American Fur Company was soon open for business here at Fort Union this is a reconstruction of the original fort which was built to impress the native people Astor hope to trade with over the next four decades members of the Assiniboine crow Blackfeet and other tribes came to the post to trade with Astor's men in a typical year 25,000 buffalo hides and more than $100,000 in goods passed through the fort a fortune in those days and enough to help make John Jacob Astor America's first multi-millionaire fur trappers and traders were the first real pioneers to establish roots in the Dakotas and it wasn't long before others followed curious to find out what the vast open spaces of the northern Great Plains had to offer

Channel: Smithsonian Channel

Views: 215,827

Rating: 4.681818 out of 5

Keywords: smithsonian, vacation, air, trading post, channel, space, Astor, wealthy, Travel, american west, america

Id: YFOdpYi_JsY

Length: 2min 49sec (169 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 02 2014