It was Bridger and his partners who gave the enterprise the name "Rocky Mountain Fur Company."
The operations of other aspiring organizations like the American Fur Company would often overlap, causing a fierce rivalry.
Nearly a decade after its founding, the stock holders sold all their shares, leaving behind a legacy in terms of both western settlement and folklore.
[1] In the early 1820s General William Ashley, of the Missouri militia, was looking to enter state politics but needed to raise funds to do so.
Having barely survived a slew of past entrepreneurial and military pursuits, Ashley was looking at an insolvent future.
[4] Later, the Sublette brothers, William and Milton, Jim Beckwourth, Hugh Glass, Thomas Fitzpatrick, David Edward Jackson, Joseph Meek, Robert Newell joined the company.
[2] They sold out to Bridger, Milton Sublette, Fitzpatrick and two others in 1830, at which time the enterprise was given the name by which it is most commonly referred to.
Prior to this point, the fur trade had relied on First Nations to do the actual trapping and hunting that produced the furs; they were then brought to trading posts where, with increasing frequency, the Native Americans were given liquor both as an actual medium of exchange, and in order to render them pliant and easily cheated.
Headquartered in the Green River Valley, trappers found numerous spots to collect valuable pelts.
Another blow was when Major Andrew Henry, considered the most experienced trapper, left the company in 1824.
None of these setbacks spelled the end for Ashley's Hundred, but soon the company confronted the same set of problems that faced the entire industry.
[7] Like all fur companies at the time, Ashley's Hundred went out of business in face of deepening financial woes.
Competition, which bred bitter rivalries, helped to price the Rocky Mountain Fur Company out of the market.
Rocky Mountain trappers encroached on competitors' territory, resulting in bitter turf wars.