Over the next 20 years, Jim Bridger would continue exploring, trapping and guiding expeditions throughout the rocky mountains. From his early trapping years, to his late exploration years, Jim Bridger could take responsibility for many different achievements.
Figure 3. Map of the Great Salt Lake. Retrieved from Google Images
One of Bridger’s most famous discoveries happened in the year 1924. His brigade was camped in “Willow Valley” (present day Chache Valley). The brigade was disputing the course of the Bear River to the south. Jim was chosen to explore the river and answer the question. His journey brought him to the Great Salt Lake. At the time he believed was an arm of the Pacific Ocean due the saltiness. Jim Bridger was credited for many years as being the first white man to discover the Great Salt Lake. However, recent evidence seems leads scholars to believe that this recognition should be given to Etienne Provost (Despain, 2017).
Jim Bridger’s greatest accomplishment would come years later in 1850, when he would discover a quicker and faster pass through the Rocky Mountains. The newly discovered pass ran south from the Great Basin and was rightfully called Bridger’s Pass. Bridger’s Pass would later be the route for overland mail, The Union Pacific Railroad line and finally Interstate 80 (Zimmerman, 2009).
Figure 4. Different trails and passes leading through the Rocky Mountains. Reprinted from The Mountain Men: Pathfinders of the West. Retrieved from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/mtmen/images/emigtrmp.jpg
In the book, Jim Bridger Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal, it reads, “But to his surprise and secret pleasure, as time passed Bridger gradually became aware that he possessed one qualification more important in the fur trade that all these, and that he had it to a degree that none of his comrades (and indeed few men in history) had ever approached; he was a born explorer” (Vestal, 59).
Jim Bridger was never a man who was always talking. Probably because when he would tell others of his adventures, they would never believe him. Marshall Trimble goes on to say, “In reality, Easterners who’d never crossed the wide Missouri didn’t believe descriptions of the spectacular scenery were real, even though they were. Mountains reaching heights of over 14,000 feet were beyond the belief of folks who’d never seen mountains taller than 4,000 feet. SInce those skeptical Easterners tended not to believe a word they said anyway, the mountain men felt compelled to exaggerate” (Trimble, 2017). True West Magazine continues in saying, “One of his favorites told while sitting around the campfire with a eager-eyed greenhorns was the time he was being pursued by a hundred or so Cheyenne warriors. They chased him for some distances and Jim wound up cornered in a box canyon with no way to escape. As the Indians were closing in old Jim would suddenly pause. After a few moments one of his listeners would ask, “What happened then, Mr. Bridger?” He give them a sly grin and reply, “They killed me” (Trimble, 2017). Jim Bridger found these encounters amusing and was known to have told many more tales just like it.