This year’s Fort Union Rendezvous takes place, June 16-19. Headlining the event is Dr. Daniel Patterson. Patterson is a scholar of early American natural history and nature writing and professor of English at Central Michigan University.
Patterson’s presentations will be at 2 p.m each day, Friday through Sunday, he will present; “Oh that we had more guns!”: John James Audubon’s Missouri River Journals and His Hidden Conservation Ethic.”
In addition there will be a featured speaker sponsored by the Montana Humanities Council, Kristi Hager. She will present “Dueling Paintbrushes, artwork of Bodmer and Catlin.” Her presentations will be on Friday at 4 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m. of the Rendezvous.
The Rendezvous will feature about a dozen traders along Trader’s Row extending out the north gate of the reconstructed post. The traders will feature their usual array of furs and handcrafted items for sale. A number of re-enactors will demonstrate a variety of 19th century fur trade skills including blacksmithing, beaver skinning, brain tanning, bow making, and flint knapping.
The 25th annual Rendezvous Run is on Saturday at 9 a.m. (CDT). It’s sponsored by the American State Bank and will include 11K and 5K run, a 5K walk and a “one-mile” fur trader’s run/walk.
Books by Patterson include “Early American Nature Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia” (2008) and three volumes on the 19th-century American nature writer Susan Fenimore Cooper, “John James Audubon’s Journal of 1826: The Voyage to The Birds of America” (2011) and his newest addition “The Missouri River Journals of John James Audubon” (2016).
He is also at work on a book that foregrounds the life of Audubon’s wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon.
Hours are from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. CDT daily at Fort Union.
Fort Union Trading Post is located 24 miles north of Sidney and 25 miles southwest of Williston, via highway 1804. While here, visitors are encouraged to tour the reconstructed fort, trade room and bourgeois house. Come and spend the day at Rendezvous. Admission is free.
A concession will provide food and drink for sale on site.
For more information on Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site contact the park at 701-572-9083. Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Union-Trading-Post-National-Historic-Site/118231345800
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