“Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver” by Frances Backhouse ECW Press, 261 pp., $16.95. Reading natural history is fraught with a particular kind of peril.

Reading natural history is fraught with a particular kind of peril. The typical progression from “here are amazing facts” to “there used to be (X) million of these majestic creatures, until ...

Frances Backhouse's 'Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver' starts down that path, but the story ends in a slightly more upbeat place.

The underwool from the beaver pelts was used to make the beaver hat. The fur trade was based on the barter system and in the late 1700s a blanket was worth seven prime beaver pelts, a gun cost 14 ...

The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan CARBONDALE, Ill. -- In the 1700s, the teeming beaver population in the Illinois territory drew trappers and explorers to the region. Business boomed to the ...

BEAVER — Fort McIntosh Garrison, an affiliate of Beaver Area Heritage Foundation, hosts an open house and recruiting drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 18 at the log house on foundation grounds ...

Scientists estimate that before Europeans arrived, North America was home to between 60 million and 400 million beavers. It took barely 400 years to trap them almost to extinction.

So now, Beaver Brand is shutting the doors of a business that once employed about 10% of New Haven. The hats and machines to make them are in the hands of new owners.

The Europeans would make hats out of the beaver pelts. A lot of the beavers were decimated in Europe, so that’s why they were coming over here to get it.

Beaver hats were a must-have for the fashionable English gent from the 1550s onwards. ... but the trade was revived when a Hudson's Bay Company started imports from Canada in the early 1700s.

The South Shore had a strong presence on Battle Road in Minute Man National Historical Park in Lincoln Saturday as part of Patriot's Day activities.

Beaver hats were a must-have for the fashionable English gent from the 1550s onwards. ... but the trade was revived when a Hudson's Bay Company started imports from Canada in the early 1700s.