The Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale is one of the best small history museums in Wyoming, dedicated to the fur trade era that shaped the American West in the early 19th century. The collection covers the lives of the trappers and traders who worked the Rocky Mountain watershed, the Native American tribes they traded with, and the ecology of the beaver trade that drove the whole enterprise.
The museum's location is significant: the Green River Rendezvous, the annual fur trade gathering that brought together trappers, traders, and Native Americans from across the mountain west, took place just outside Pinedale from 1825 to 1840. The site of the rendezvous is marked and accessible. The museum does an excellent job explaining how this remote valley became the commercial and social hub of an entire frontier economy.