Nine years after Chouteau’s announcement of the bank charter, William Ashley and Andrew Henry entered the fur trade, employing a small army of frontiersmen to venture into the Rocky Mountains in search of beaver pelts. Out of Ashley’s and Henry’s imaginative endeavors came the legendary Mountain Men of the fur trade. Among these trappers, explorers, and trailblazers were men whose names are now imprinted upon the West - Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, John Colter, James Clyman, and the great mapmaker Jedediah Smith.