BRIDGER, JIM

born March 17, 1804, Richmond, Va., U.S. died July 17, 1881, near Kansas City, Mo. byname of James Bridger American fur trader, frontiersman, scout, the mountain man par excellence. In 1812, Bridger's father, a surveyor and an innkeeper, moved his family to an Illinois farm near St. Louis, Mo. The young Bridger joined his first fur-trapping expedition in 1822 (that of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, up the Missouri River), and for the next 20 years he passed repeatedly on foot through an enormous area whose boundaries were the Canadian border, the Missouri River, the ColoradoNew Mexico border, and Idaho and Utah, constantly exploring new territory; he is believed to have been the first white man to visit (1824) Great Salt Lake and was among the first to explore the geysers and sights of the Yellowstone region. In 1843 he established Fort Bridger, in southwestern Wyoming, as a way station for emigrants traveling westward on the Oregon Trail and as a fur-trading post. (The fort later served the U.S. Army, and it was not abandoned until 1890.) When the Mormons took over the fort, Bridger entered government service as a scout and guided numerous expeditions, including the Utah invasion of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston in 185758 and the Berthoud party that was trying to discover a direct route from Denver to Great Salt Lake in 1861. His knowledge of the territory and its Indian inhabitants (he had three successive Indian wives) was unrivaled. He is commemorated in the names of Bridger Range (Montana), Bridger Peak (southern Wyoming), Bridger Pass (southern Wyoming), and the Bridger National Forest (western Wyoming).