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A monthly publication about conservation in Missouri. Started in 1938, the printed magazine is free to residents of Missouri.
Kansas City, Mo. – Trading furs, camp fire cooking, and shooting black powder rifles are skills alive and well in these modern times. But those skills had a special heyday in the early 1800s fur trade era. People who still practice those skills will offer displays and demonstrations at the fifth annual Lake City Rendezvous 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 7. This free event is for all ages at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Lake City Shooting Range, 28505 E. Truman Road, Buckner, Mo.
The Rendezvous will feature black powder shooters, fur pelt displays, blacksmith demonstrations, campfire cooking and many more outdoor and camping skills. Traders will offer hand-crafted goods to visitors. Re-enactors in period dress and gear will be present and welcoming visitors to their trapper camps, answering questions about gear and skills. Visitors will be able to try BB gun and archery target shooting.
A root beer stand will offer refreshment. Children (and grownups too) can reap sweets from a “candy cannon” that will be fired every hour on the hour.
The Kansas City area and towns such as Independence have strong ties to the fur trade era of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Native American and French trappers harvested beaver fur and other pelts in the area. Explorer and bureaucrat William Clark established Fort Osage in eastern Jackson County to trade goods for fur with the Osage tribe. The area was an outfitting and stopover point for trappers and traders using the Missouri River to venture onto the prairies and into the Rocky Mountains. Famous mountain man Jim Bridger spent his elder years in Kansas City and is buried in Independence.
MDC’s Lake City Rendezvous will celebrate the nature craft, ingenuity, and artistry found when Jackson County and western Missouri were on the American frontier. For more information, call 816-249-3194 or visit http://mdc.mo.gov/lakecity.
