On the wall of my office hangs a map given to me many years ago by the Carbon County Higher Education Center for “Contributions to the History of Carbon County.”
My map is a copy. The original, which was drawn by Jim Bridger, is at the American Heritage Center on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie. The detail in the map is remarkable.
The mountains, rivers, lakes and other geologic features of Wyoming are not in perfect perspective but studying the map you can clearly see the Continental Divide, the Bighorn and Wind River Basins, Jackson Hole, the Green and the North Platte Rivers, and more.
This map was drawn by a man who had never seen a photograph of the area, but he had walked the country, or ridden horseback across it. More than once.
The story of westward expansion is embodied in the biography of Jim Bridger – who came west with Ashley and Henry’s brigade of 100 young men in 1822 and who forged pathways that were followed by mountain men, emigrants, surveyors, scientists, and the military. Bridger left no area that is now Wyoming unexplored, and the map he drew is concrete evidence of the places he roamed.
The newest, and best biography of this old frontiersman was written by Jerry Enzler who pieced
together Bridger’s story by following the archival trail from Missouri to Wyoming, Enzler’s account, Jim Bridger - Trailblazer of the American West, is chronological and comprehensive.
Bridger was born in 1804, orphaned when he was 13, and traveled up the Missouri River at age 18 to trap beaver.
When he was 20 Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake. The next year he became the first person known to paddle the treacherous Bad Pass rapids on the Bighorn River and demonstrated his leadership when he led a band of trappers to retrieve stolen horses from a camp of Bannock Indians.
At age 22 he explored Yellowstone and by the time he was 26 he was one of five partners in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Bridger became the epitome of the mountaineers who Washington Irving described as “a totally different class [of] traders and trappers that scale the vast mountain chains . . . Perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth . . . lead a life of more continued exertion, peril, and excitement.”
Bridger was one of the foremost Rocky Mountain fur brigade leaders in the 1830s and 1840s. David Brown would say Bridger had an “absolute understanding of the Indian character in all its different phases . . . His bravery was unquestionable, his horsemanship equally so, and as to his skill with a rifle, it will scarcely be doubted.”
Bridger was a fur trapper, explorer, and guide. As biographer Enzler notes, he probably guided more trapping brigades, wagon trains, scientific explorations, topographical surveys, and army expeditions than anyone in western history. All that guiding gave Bridger an understanding of the landscape few men had in the 19th century. He was known to be illiterate, but that didn’t mean he lacked intelligence and ability. As a cartographer his skills are permanently etched in a drawing of one of Wyoming’s earliest maps.
We who live in Wyoming think nothing of getting in our vehicle and driving an hour or more for groceries, or to visit a doctor, or equally important to many, to attend a sporting event that might be high school rodeo, basketball, wrestling or volleyball or Cowboy football. But imagine the same trips on foot or horseback. Although Jim Bridger wasn’t watching sporting events to cheer on the home team, he definitely left his footprints all over the state.
Not long after publication of his biography of Bridger, I asked Enzler why Bridger had not received the same “pathfinding” attention John C. Frémont and other legendary men got. His response:
“Both John Frémont and Kit Carson rose to national fame through Frémont’s widely read publications about his expeditions, which were written in part by Fremont’s wife Jessie Benton Frémont. Frémont ran for president as the 1856 Republican nominee which garnered more fame. Kit Carson became the hero of many dime novels. Similarly, Daniel Boone’s explorations were told in print and legend. Davy Crockett was elected to the U. S. Congress and his life was portrayed in popular fiction and even on stage. Bridger could not write, and he did not collaborate with anyone to tell his story, nor did he show any interest in doing so.”
Even so Bridger is a part of the American identity. Alfred Jacob Miller featured him in his dramatic Western paintings and Washington Irving depicted him in The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. Bridger became a businessman during the fur trade, and at the end of that era he and his partner Louis Vasquez built a fort that would serve the emigrant travelers headed to Oregon country and California.
Candy Moulton can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
