In the midst of mechanical carnival rides, vendors selling compactable electric bikes and the latest farm equipment at the North Dakota State Fair, visitors can get a glimpse back into a time when such technology wasn't around.

The Fur Traders Rendezvous is a re-enactment of the pre-Lewis and Clark era in North Dakota, where visitors can view and purchase recreation items.

Visitors will hear the sound of a blacksmith pounding hot metal and smell an outdoor oven baking bread; if it weren't for the other visitors dressed in modern clothes, it would look like a snapshot of the 18th century.

"For a lot of us, this is how we spend our vacation, doing the fair," said Nick Sevart of Bismarck, who sets up and manages the fur traders market. "It's the history of it; it's so hands on. Museums are behind glass, but here, we replicate and live it."

The people involved don't leave when the fair closes each night. They sleep in old-fashioned tents for the whole week.

Many of these fur traders do this sort of thing all the time, only in more private and less rural settings. They only take what they can carry and strictly use what would have been available back then.

"If you were on the frontier, you couldn't just run out and buy everything," Sevart said.

Some of these re-enactors go to considerable lengths to fit the part. Some read journals of people and buy time-period clothing and other personal items.

Tom Crowson, 44, has been coming all the way from Clinton, Mo., since 1997 to participate in the Fur Traders Rendezvous. He was stationed at Minot Air Force Base.

Crowson sits in a smaller-scale representation of a trading post. The real trading post, he said, would have been a three-story building.

People would have come from more than 200 miles, once a year, to get supplies from someone like Crowson. Supplies like tin, beads, blankets, tobacco, tea, clay pipes, soap, clothes, sugar, alcohol, socks, sewing supplies and other items weren't as easy to come by as they are today.

Millions of beaver skins would run through these trading posts, but they also took everything from buffalo skins to coyote.

Among the Native North Dakotans, beads were an especially valuable trading commodity, especially blue beads, Crowson said.

"Beads are real expensive now, but back then, it was as good as money, and wearing them on clothes symbolized wealth."

Crowson said this often led to abuse by the traders of the Indians who did not know the common barter equivalency. Traders would trade one small bead for a skin with an Indian, but would trade a whole reel of beads for a skin from a settler.

"Everybody would come, but would only come like once a year," he said, noting that North Dakota only had two trading posts in the pre-Lewis and Clark era.

"I love the history, I get to see the people, this is a family for us," Crowson said.

Ken Lake, from Bismarck, said the rendezvous is important because it reminds people of how easy they have it compared to back then.

For instance, at the fur traders rendezvous, he has a fire starting demonstration where he showcases four different methods for passers-by: magnifying glass, bow and drill, flint and steal and lastly, a fire piston.

He said it's easy to learn, but for the most part, fire starting is a forgotten skill because of modern conveniences.

"But the skills are still needed out there if something happens and those (conveniences)aren't around," he said, adding how important it is to know more than one method.

Walk past Lake, further into the rendezvous, where a bridge is being made with tools from the fur trader era.

Carl Behrens, a 47-year-old building contractor from the Turtle Mountains, was stripping the bark off logs Friday with his apprentice Dalton Brown, a 17-year-old from Eau Claire, Wis.

"You got to peel the wood because the bugs get underneath the bark, and also because the bark and the wood shrink at different rates," Behrens said, adding that if the wood is bound together with the bark still on it, and the wood shrinks, the structure will be unstable.

Sevart said all these things and the other stands at the fur traders rendevous, has a lot to offer people.

"What it does is it brings a line out of what you read in a history book and gives you a better understanding," he said. "They get an idea of what it was like to live in the fur trade era versus just going to Wal-Mart to buy everything you need."

(Reach reporter Chris Rosacker at 250-8254 or at chris.rosacker@;bismarcktribune.com.)