Revisiting the Legend of Jim Bridger

Legendary mountain man Jim Bridger could neither read nor write, leaving others to document his exploits across the American West. More than a century after his death in 1881, his life still fascinates historians and readers, his story passed down much as it once was, by word of mouth and colored by memory, myth and hard fact.

Bridger spent nearly seven decades on the frontier as a mountain man, trapper, U.S. Army scout and wilderness guide. Award-winning author Bill Markley is the latest historian to grapple with Bridger’s sprawling legacy in his book, The Life and Times of Jim Bridger. To do so, Markley sifted through the documented lives of Bridger’s business partners, companions and military associates, aiming to separate fact from folklore. He also builds on the work of earlier biographers J. Cecil Alter (Jim Bridger, 1950) and Jerry Enzler (Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West, 2021), crediting them “for breaking the trail.”

“Jim Bridger loved the West, its landscapes, its wildlife, its peoples, and most of all its freedom,” Markley writes in the introduction. “Are you ready? Let’s enter the frontier world of Jim Bridger.”

The book traces key episodes of Bridger’s life, beginning with his 1822 journey up the Missouri River as part of Gen. William Ashley’s fur-trapping expedition. Just 18 years old, Bridger helped crew one of the expedition’s keelboats, launching a career that would place him at the center of some of the West’s most formative moments.

Among the most enduring and controversial episodes is the 1823 grizzly bear mauling of fellow mountain man Hugh Glass. Later accounts claimed Glass was left for dead by two members of Ashley’s expedition, including a young man identified only as “Bridges.” Markley weighs those accounts against later testimony, including remarks from U.S. Geological Survey scientist James Stevenson, who worked closely with Bridger. When asked in 1886 whether Bridger deserted Glass, Stevenson replied, “Bridger told me the story of your Glass, but there was no desertion.”

No book about Bridger would be complete without examining his role as an early explorer and observer of the West’s most remarkable landscapes. U.S. Army Capt. John Gunnison once praised “Major Bridger” for his ground-breaking descriptions of the Yellowstone geothermal region, noting Bridger’s ability to sketch maps with a buffalo hide and charcoal and to describe geysers that “spout up seventy feet, with a terrible hissing noise,” and hot springs so intense that meat could be cooked in them.

In 1824, Bridger is also credited with another profound discovery. Breaking away alone from his fur-trapping party, he followed a river into a broad valley and encountered an immense body of water. When he tasted it, the water was salty.

Some believed he had reached the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of California. Only later did explorers realize it was an inland lake with no outlet: the Great Salt Lake. As Markley emphasizes, it remains “the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.”