Why "pre-1840"?

[AZ-Robert]

A re-enacting / trekking question, but didn't see where it fit over there...

Why is the cut-off date for events / groups set at 1840? Side locks and muzzle-loading continued well past that date. So what is it these groups are trying to exclude by setting the date at 1840? Are they just trying to say, "no Civil War stuff, please"?

 

[Stumpkiller]

Last of the rendezvous among the fur company agents and free trappers.

The beaver had gone beaver by 1840.

There was just too much arguing going on between the flinters vs. the percussion shooters and they fell apart. :crackup:

 

[Wart]

The cut off date of 1840 is set because this was the time of the end of the fur trade era as we know it today.
Nothing agains CW reenactors :thumbsup:

 

[bnail]

Hey A-z:
This is a convenient date since, as Stumpkiller said, the last Rendezvous was held in 1840. It was just no longer profitable for the companies to meet the trappers "halfway,"
thus ending the commercial element of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.
I believe there are technilogical elements that also come into play, as the revolver had been introduced and we see a different cultural movement starting. The Oregon trail and the proliferation of settlers, the Mexican-American War, and to top it all off, Sutter's mill and the gold rush in '49.
Okay Rky Mtn guys, Could I venture to say the trade died in '40 and was buried in '49?

 

[AZ-Robert]

I believe there are technological elements that also come into play, as the revolver had been introduced and we see a different cultural movement starting...

Ah so, said the blind man. That probably gets to the meat of it. :thanks:

 

[Claude Mathis]

Why is the cut-off date for events / groups set at 1840?

Only "Rendezvous" has a cut-off date of 1840 because that's when they ended. There are many other events after that time period, just not Rendezvous.