Jim bridger mountain man biography

Matthew Despain and Fred R. Gowans
Utah History Encyclopedia,

James Bridger was one of the greatest frontiersmen of Utah and American history. During his lifetime he was a hunter, trapper, trader, Indian fighter, and guide, and one of only a few trappers to remain in the Rockies after the demise of the fur trade. In young Bridger heeded William Ashley&#;s call for one hundred &#;enterprising young men&#; and ascended the route of the Missouri River under Major Andrew Henry&#;s command.

Bridger spent his first year with the company on the upper Missouri until Blackfoot Indian hostilities forced the expedition back down river in the spring of Bridger then accompanied Henry&#;s brigade to the Yellowstone River, where, en rutt, Hugh Glass was attacked bygd a grizzly. Evidence would indikera that Bridger volunteered as one of Glass&#;s caretakers, but that he abandoned Glass believing he would not live. Glass miraculously survived and apparently exonerated Bridger&#;s desertion due t

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Jim Bridger, mountain man and explorer, is born

Two months before Lewis and Clark begin their western expedition, Jim Bridger is born in Richmond, Virginia. Twenty years later, Bridger, heading West along the routes Lewis and Clark pioneered, became one of the greatest mountain men of the 19th century.

The son of a surveyor and an innkeeper, Bridger moved with his family to St. Louis in There, Bridger apprenticed to a blacksmith, learned to handle boats, and became a good shot and skilled woodsman. When the Ashley-Henry fur trading company advertised for “enterprising young men” to travel the Missouri River to trade with the local tribes, Bridger was among the first to respond, and he was hired in

Though he lacked much formal education, Bridger demonstrated a brilliant ability for finding his way and surviving in the wilderness. As part of the Ashley-Henry team, he helped construct the first fur trading post on the Yellowstone River. At the age of 21, Bridger became the first

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Jim Bridger Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal

Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. He was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history. He couldn't write his name, but at eighteen he had braved the fury of the Missouri, ascending it in a keelboat flotilla commanded by that stalwart Mike Fink. By , when he was only twenty, he had discovered the Great Salt Lake. Later he was to open the Overland Route, which was the path of the Overland Stage, the Pony Express, and the Union Pacific. One of the foremost trappers in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, he was a legend in his own time as well as ours. He remains one of the most important scouts and guides in the history of the West.

The Christian Science Monitor has called this biography "probably the fairest portrait of Jim Bridger in existence." The New York Times has praise for a "painstaking job of research among the usual Bridger sources and among some others which have been negl