John Day (trapper)

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For other uses, see John Day.

John Day (abt. 1770-February 16, 1820) was an American hunter and fur trapper in the old Oregon Country, which term generally designated the area then jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain, including present-day Oregon, Washington, Idaho, western Montana and southern British Columbia.

Day was born in Culpeper County, Virginia and came west through Kentucky and to Spanish Upper Louisiana (now Missouri) by 1797. In late 1810, he was engaged as a hunter for the Pacific Fur Company's Overland Expedition (sometimes called the Hunt Party or Astor Expedition), traveling west from Missouri to Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811-1812. He is best known, along with Ramsay Crooks, for being robbed and stripped naked by Indians on the Columbia River near the mouth of the river than now bears his name in Eastern Oregon. After they finally made their way to Fort Astoria in April, Day was assigned to accompany Robert Stuart back east to St. Louis in June 1812, but was left on the Lower Columbia River where he is said to have gone mad. He returned to Fort Astoria and spent the next eight years hunting and trapping mainly in the Willamette Valley and what is now southern Idaho. John Day died February 16, 1820 at the winter camp of Donald MacKenzie's Snake Country Expedition in what is now Butte County, Idaho.

His name is well-remembered, being attached to a large river and its four branches in eastern Oregon, as well as the cities of John Day and Dayville in Grant County, Oregon, and a smaller river and unincorporated community in Clatsop County, Oregon. His name was previously attached to other landmarks during the fur trade era.

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