Joseph Goff Gale (1807-1881) - A trapper, pioneer and politician, Gale was born at Washington, D.C. on April 29, 1807. He was well educated as a child and when he grew up he made his way west. In 1831, he accompanied Ewing Young from Taos, New Mexico to California and the next two years he was trapping on the Snake River. In 1834, he worked in the Rocky Mountains and California, making his way to Oregon by late in the year. For the next four years, he worked out of Fort Hall, Idaho and married a Umatilla Indian woman. In 1838, he settled in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. There, he and several others built a ship in which they intended to hunt sea otter; however, this was short lived as, after sailing it to San Francisco, they sold the ship and drove cattle back to Oregon in 1853. He was elected one of three different governors of Oregon that summer. In 1848, he returned to California, where he lived for a time, before returning to Oregon in about 1862. He died in Eagle Valley, Oregon on December 13, 1881.

John Gannt (1790-1849) - A soldier, trapper, trader and guide, Gannt was born at Queen Anne, Maryland in 1790 and later moved with his family to Kentucky. In 1817, he joined the army, spending 12 years in service, eventually rising to the rank of captain. He served at several frontier posts and was with Colonel Henry Leavenworth during the Arikara War in 1823. Several years later, on May 12, 1829, he was found guilty of falsification of pay accounts and was dismissed from the army. The next year, he joined Jefferson Blackwell in a fur trading partnership and they soon began operations in the upper Rocky Mountains. Later, they moved to the upper Arkansas River, where they established a trading post near present-day Pueblo, Colorado. They were the first to trade with the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes in any volume. The firm went out of business in 1834, and Gant then helped William Bent in establishing Bent’s Fort. In 1835, he guided Henry Dodge’s expedition to the Colorado Rockies. In later became an Indian agent for the Potawatomie tribe at Council Bluffs in 1838, but by 1843, was once again acting as a guide. He then went to California where he lived the rest of his life. He died in Napa Valley, California on February 14, 1849 of ear trouble.

Josiah Gregg (1806-1850) - Trader, explorer, naturalist and writer, Gregg was born to Savannah and Harmon Gregg in Tennessee on July 19, 1806. When he was just a child, he moved with his family to Howard County, Missouri. Josiah was a sickly boy who tended towards intellectual endeavors, tutoring mathematics while still a child and studying surveying at 16. Around 1825 the family moved to Jackson County, where Josiah opened a school and taught for a year. He wanted to study medicine, but was denied an apprenticeship so turned to studying law. In 1830; however, he became seriously ill with tuberculosis.   

The following summer, unable to sit on a horse, he joined a caravan headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico on the advice of his doctor. Starting the trip lying in the back of a wagon, his health improved along the way and by the time the wagon train reached New Mexico, he had learned to speak Spanish and was bookkeeping for a merchant named Jesse Sutton.