James Bridger (March 17, 1804 - July 17, 1881)

James Bridger was born at Richmond, Virginia, in 1804. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in St. Louis, Missouri. On February 13, 1822, William Ashley placed an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette and Public Adviser calling for 100 enterprising men to ascend the Missouri River to take part in the fur collecting business. Those who agreed to join the party included Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, William Sublette, David Jackson, Hugh Glass, Jim Beckwourth, and Jedediah Smith. In 1824 Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake. He also went trapping with William Sublette, David Jackson and Jedediah Smith in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. Later he helped establish the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Bridger developed a reputation as a courageous mountain man and was willing to work as a trapper in dangerous Blackfeet country. In 1832 he was hit in the back with an arrowhead. He recovered and in 1835 worked with Kit Carson and Joe Meek. After the trip was completed Bridger managed to get Dr. Marcus Whitman, a medical missionary, to cut out the arrowhead from his back. In 1843 Bridger established Fort Bridger, a trading post on Black's Fork of the Green River in southwestern Wyoming. Over the next few years the post became established as a resting place and supply station for wagon trains on the Oregon Trail. Bridger also employed his blacksmith's skills at the fort. Later it also became a pony express station. After his first wife died, Bridger married a Ute woman. She died in childbirth and in 1850 he married a Shoshone. The couple had two children. In 1853 Bridger upset local Mormons by selling weapons to Native Americans. An attempt was made to arrest him and Bridger fled to the mountains. Later he moved to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. He continued to work as a guide and accompanied General Albert S. Johnston during his military campaign of 1857-1858. In 1850, looking for an alternate overland route to the South Pass, he found what would eventually be known as Bridger's Pass, which shortened the Oregon Trail by 61 miles. Bridger Pass would later be the chosen route for both the Union Pacific Railroad and later Interstate 80. In 1864, he blazed the Bridger Trail, an alternate route from Wyoming to the gold fields of Montana that avoided the dangerous Bozeman Trail. Later, he served as guide and army scout during the first Powder River Expedition against the Sioux and Cheyenne that were blocking the Bozeman Trail (Red Cloud's War). In 1865 he was discharged at Fort Laramie. Suffering from goiter, arthritis, rheumatism and other health problems, he returned to Westport, Missouri, in 1868. He was unsuccessful in collecting back rent from the government for its use of Fort Bridger. He died on his farm near Kansas City, Missouri, on July 17, 1881. For some 23 years, Bridger's grave was located in a nondescript cemetery just a few hundred yards from his farm house but his remains were re-interred in the more notable Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri in 1904.