Entry into the fur trade

Advertisement from Missouri Gazette, February 13, 1822.

In the early 1820s, William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry, a bullet maker he met through his gunpowder business, posted famous advertisements in St. Louis newspapers seeking one hundred "enterprising young men . . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years" to be hired at $200 a year.^[2] The men who responded to this call became known as "Ashley's Hundred." Between 1822 and 1825, Ashley and Henry's Rocky Mountain Fur Company sponsored several large scale fur trapping expeditions in the mountain west.

In 1823 Ashley's Hundred set their first expedition to the Rocky Mountains but their ammunition wagon blew up from 800 pounds of powder. Ashley's Hundred returned on a second trip but were driven back in a fight withs the Arikara.^[2] Ashley was given a rifle made by Samuel Hawken which he took on this expedition, a 42 inch barrel predecessor of the Hawken rifle. Jedediah Smith's party, part of Ashley's Hundred, were officially credited with the American discovery of South Pass in the winter of 1824. Ashley devised the rendezvous system in which trappers, Indians and traders would meet annually in a predetermined location to exchange furs, goods and money. His innovations in the fur trade earned Ashley a great deal of money and recognition, and helped open the western part of the continent to American expansion.

In 1825, he led an expedition into the Salt Lake Valley. South of the Great Salt Lake, he came across Utah Lake, which he named Lake Ashley.^[3] He established Fort Ashley on the banks to trade with the Indians. Over the next three years, according to 19th century historian Frances Fuller Victor, the fort "collected over one-hundred-and-eighty thousand dollars' worth of furs".^[4] In late 1824, he explored present-day northern Colorado, ascending the South Platte River to the base of the Front Range, then ascending the Cache la Poudre River to the Laramie Plains and onward to the Green River.

On June 2, 1823, Ashley was beaten by Arikara Indians at their villages near the Grand River. Ashley reported twelve men killed and eleven wounded, of whom two died.^[5]

Later political career

In 1826, Ashley sold the fur trading company to a group including Jedediah Smith but continued supplying the company and brokering their furs. Upon the death of Spencer Darwin Pettis in August 1831, he was elected to finish out Pettis's term in the United States House of Representatives. As a member of the Jacksonian Party, Ashley won election to the seat in 1832 and re-election in 1834. In 1836, he declined to run for a fourth term in Congress, instead running unsuccessfully in the 1836 Missouri gubernatorial election. Many attribute his defeat to his increasingly pro-business stance in Congress, which alienated the rural Jacksonians. After the loss, he went back to making money on real estate, but his health declined rapidly.