Trappers’ Last Shot by Currier and Ives.
Valentine Johnson Herring was a trapper in the American West who settled down to become a government official. In trapping circles, he was universally known as “Old Rube.”
Born in Illinois in 1812, Herring received a fair education as a child and went to St. Louis, Missouri, when he grew up. In 1831, John Gantt hired him for a trapping expedition in the Rocky Mountains. Two years later, he worked with William Sublette on the upper Missouri River. He returned to St. Louis, where Nathaniel Wyeth hired him to guide him to Fort Hall, Idaho.
He eventually became a free trapper. In 1841-42, he was in charge of Fort Lupton in eastern Colorado. Spending considerable time in Taos, New Mexico, he got into a gunfight with a man named Henry Beer over a Mexican woman. In 1849, he went to California, where he settled in San Bernardino County. He became superintendent of schools in 1853 and served as justice of the peace, county assessor, and other offices, including sheriff in 1859. He died in 1883.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated May 2025.
Also See:
Trappers, Traders & Pathfinders
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