William Henry Vanderburgh (1800-1832)  - Born at Vincennes, Indiana, he grew up to attend West Point but did not graduate. He then went to work for the Missouri Fur Company near Council Bluffs, Iowa under Manual Lisa and Joshua Pilcher. A short-lived Fort Vanderburgh, North Dakota, was named for him in 1821. He took part in the Arikara War in 1823. In 1826, he and several others formed a fur trading company to succeed the Missouri Fur Company and the following year was wintering on the Green River in Wyoming. In the winter of 1828, he was trading with the Ponca Indians in Nebraska.

Later, he worked under Kenneth McKenzie of the American Fur Company at Fort Union, North Dakota and led 50 men to the Green River in the summer of 1830. He continued to trade through the mountains and took part in the Battle of Pierre's Hole, Idaho against Gros Ventre warriors on July 18, 1832. Later that year, he and another trapper named Alexis Pilou, while in the vicinity of Alder Gulch, Montana were killed in an Indian ambush on October 14, 1832. His body was never recovered.

Pierre Louis Vasquez (1798-1868) - Born in St. Louis, Missouri on October 3, 1798, Vasquez grew up to become a fur trapper and trader, receiving his first license to trade with the Pawnee Indians. By the early 1830's he had moved westward into the Rocky Mountains where he established one of the first trading posts at the mouth of Clear Creek in Colorado in 1835. Working with Andrew Sublette, the post did a brisk business for fur pelts with the Indians. Soon, however, three more trading posts were established in the region and the competition became fierce. In 1841, he sold out his interest in Fort Vasquez and soon met up with Jim Bridger. Two years later, the pair built Fort Bridger on the Black Fork of the Green River in Wyoming. The operation was not only an active trading post but soon became a popular stopping point on the Oregon Trail. In 1846, Vasquez returned to St. Louis, where he married a widow by the name Narcissa Land Ashcraft. The pair returned to Fort Bridger for a time before moving on to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1855, where Vasquez opened a store. He and Bridger sold the fort in 1858. Vasquez retired back in his home state of Missouri and died in Westport on September 5, 1868.

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