JAMES BRIDGER.
Bridger Lake (7,900)—R: 13—Name a fixture prior to 1870.—For James Bridger, the Daniel Boone of the Rockies, and one of the most remarkable products of the trapping and gold-seeking eras.
He was born in Richmond, Va., in March, 1804, and died in Washington, Jackson Co., Mo., July 17, 1881. He must have gone west at a very early age for he is known to have been in the mountains in 1820. Niles Register for 1822 speaks of him as associated with Fitzpatrick in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Another record of this period reveals him as leader of a band of whites sent to retake stolen horses from the hostile Bannocks. In 1832, he had become a resident partner in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. That he was a recognized leader among the early mountaineers while yet in his minority seems beyond question. He became “The Old Man of the Mountains” before he was thirty years of age.
Among the more prominent achievements of Bridger’s life may be noted the following: He was long a leading spirit in the great Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He discovered Great Salt Lake and the noted Pass that bears his name. He built Fort Bridger in the lovely valley of Black Fork of Green River, where transpired many thrilling events connected with the history of the Mormons and “Forty-niners.” He had explored, and could accurately describe, the wonders of the Yellowstone fully a quarter of a century before their final discovery.
In person he was tall and spare, straight and agile, eyes gray, hair brown and long, and abundant even in old age; expression mild, and manners agreeable. He was hospitable and generous, and was always trusted and respected. He possessed to a high degree the confidence of the Indians, one of whom, a Shoshone woman, he made his wife.
Unquestionably Bridger’s chief claim to remembrance by posterity rests upon the extraordinary part he bore in the exploration of the West. The common verdict of his many employers, from Robert Campbell down to Captain Raynolds, is that as a guide he was without an equal. He was a born topographer. The whole West was mapped out in his mind as in an exhaustive atlas. Such was his instinctive sense of locality and direction that it used to be said that he could “smell his way” where he could not see it. He was not only a good topographer in the field, but he could reproduce his impressions in sketches. “With a buffalo skin and a piece of charcoal,” says Captain Gunnison, “he will map out any portion of this immense region, and delineate mountains, streams, and the circular valleys, called ‘holes,’ with wonderful accuracy.” His ability in this line caused him always to be in demand as guide to exploring parties, and his name is connected with scores of prominent government and private expeditions.
His lifetime measures that period of our history during which the West was changed from a trackless wilderness to a settled and civilized country. He was among the first who went to the mountains, and he lived to see all that had made a life like his possible swept away forever. His name survives in many a feature of our western geography, but in none with greater honor than in this little lake among the mountains that he knew so well; and near the source of that majestic stream with which so much of his eventful life was identified.
Delusion Lake (7,850)—M: 9—1878—U. S. G. S.—This lake was long supposed to be an arm of the Yellowstone Lake, and, in the fanciful comparison of the main lake to the form of the human hand, occupied the position of the index finger. The delusion consisted in this mistaken notion of a permanent connection between the two lakes.
Dryad Lake (8,250)—K: 8—1885—U. S. G. S.—Characteristic.
Duck Lake (7,850)—M: 7—1885—U. S. G. S.—Characteristic.