Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 14
Release: 1969-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803243750

In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West

Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West
Author: Dale Lowell Morgan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 1953-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803251380

In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Smith
Author: Barton H. Barbour
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806183225

Mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith casts a heroic shadow. He was the first Anglo-American to travel overland to California via the Southwest, and he roamed through more of the West than anyone else of his era. His adventures quickly became the stuff of legend. Using new information and sifting fact from folklore, Barton H. Barbour now offers a fresh look at this dynamic figure. Barbour tells how a youthful Smith was influenced by notable men who were his family’s neighbors, including a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. When he was twenty-three, hard times leavened with wanderlust set him on the road west. Barbour delves into Smith’s journals to a greater extent than previous scholars and teases out compelling insights into the trader’s itineraries and personality. Use of an important letter Smith wrote late in life deepens the author’s perspective on the legendary trapper. Through Smith’s own voice, this larger-than-life hero is shown to be a man concerned with business obligations and his comrades’ welfare, and even a person who yearned for his childhood. Barbour also takes a hard look at Smith’s views of American Indians, Mexicans in California, and Hudson’s Bay Company competitors and evaluates his dealings with these groups in the fur trade. Dozens of monuments commemorate Smith today. This readable book is another, giving modern readers new insight into the character and remarkable achievements of one of the West’s most complex characters.

The Travels of Jedediah Smith

The Travels of Jedediah Smith
Author: Jedediah Strong Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN:

The Travels of Jedediah Smith begins with Smith's own sketch of his entry into the fur trade in 1822, when he left St. Louis with an expedition headed by William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry. The book continues with the Smith's daily record from June 23, 1827, to July 3, 1828, dealing with his remarkable journey on foot over the Utah desert, his second visit to California, and his trip to Oregon.

The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith

The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith
Author: Jedediah Strong Smith
Publisher: Bison Books
Total Pages: 259
Release: 1977
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9780803291973

Jedediah S. Smith was to western exploration what Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison were to the world of invention—a legendary figure kiting into the unknown, a lighter of the dark. No one did more to open the American West than this mountain man. His greatest exploring expedition came in 1826 when he looked to the Southwest for trapping grounds. Jedediah Smith's route ran, in modern terms, from Soda Springs in Idaho to the Great Salt Lake, southward across Utah, along the Colorado River to the Mojave Desert, and westward to California. When he reached the San Gabriel mission there, he could claim to be the first American to have gone overland through the Southwest. Then Smith marched northward through the San Joaquin Valley and, with two companions, embarked across the Great Basin. In traveling to the rendezvous of 1827 they became the first citizens of the United States ever to cross the Sierra eastbound and the Great Basin. That is the itinerary described in The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith, which contains the mountain man's long-lost journals. After coming to light in 1967, they were edited by George R. Brooks and published in a limited edition a decade later. This Bison Book reprint brings a scarce historical record to a wider audience.

A Cycle of the West

A Cycle of the West
Author: John Gneisenau Neihardt
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 878
Release: 2018-08-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 149620736X

A Cycle of the West rewards its readers with a sweeping saga of the American West and John G. Neihardt's exhilarating vision of frontier history. It is infused with wonder, nostalgia, and a keen appreciation of epic history. Unquestionably the masterpiece of the poet who has been called the "American Homer," A Cycle of the West celebrates the land and legends of the Old West in five narrative poems: The Song of Three Friends (1919), The Song of Hugh Glass (1915), The Song of Jed Smith (1941), The Song of the Indian Wars (1925), and The Song of the Messiah (1935). This unforgettable epic of discovery, conquest, courage, and tragedy speaks movingly and resoundingly of a unique American experience. The new introduction by former Texas poet laureate Alan Birkelbach and annotations by Joe Green present fresh views of Neihardt's iconic work.

Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West

Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West
Author: LeRoy Reuben Hafen
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1982-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803272101

The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth century—formed the vanguard of the American empire and became the heroes of American adventure. This volume brings to the general reader brief biographies of eighteen representative mountain men, selected from among the essay assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965-72). The subjects and authors are: Manuel Lisa (Richard E. Oglesby); Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Janet Lecompte); Wilson Price Hunt (William Brandon); William H. Ashley (Harvey L. Carter); Jedediah Smith (Harvey L. Carter); John McLoughlin (Kenneth L. Holmes); Peter Skene Ogden (Ted J. Warner); Ceran St. Vrain (Harold H. Dunham); Kit Carson (Harvey L. Carter); Old Bill Williams (Frederic E. Voelker); William Sublette (John E. Sunder);Thomas Fitzpatrick (LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen); James Bridger (Cornelius M. Ismert); Benjamin L. E. Bonneville (Edgeley W. Todd); Joseph R. Walker (Ardis M. Walker); Nathaniel Wyeth (William R. Sampson); Andrew Drips (Harvey L. Carter); and Joseph L. Meek (Harvey E. Tobie).

Jedediah Smith's Journal

Jedediah Smith's Journal
Author: Jedediah Smith
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2017-01-21
Genre:
ISBN: 9781542655156

This is the journal of Jedediah Smith, businessman, mountain man, adventurer and explorer and his expedition to California in 1826. Smith kept a detailed and interesting account as he made his way from Utah, across the Rocky Mountains and to coastal California. He encountered many Indian tribes along the way, some who had never encountered Europeans before.The journey was very difficult, through harsh terrain, and he has many tales to tell of the deprivations of desert and mountain.

The Mountainous West

The Mountainous West
Author: William Wyckoff
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780803297593

Traditional interpretations of the American West have concentrated on the importance of its aridity to the region's cultural evolution and development. But the West is marked by a second fact of physical geography that distinguished it (from the experiences of settlers) from the east. As pioneers struggled with the climate west of the hundredth meridian, they were also confronted by mountains strewn across the region and offering their own set of limitations and opportunities. This volume focuses on these green islands of the Mountainous West that have witnessed patterns of settlement and development distinct from their lowland neighbors. In thirteen essays, the contributors address the mountains by means of five themes: the mountains as barriers to movement, islands of moisture, a zone of concentrated resources, an area of government control, and a restorative sanctuary. The focus ranges from California's Sierra Nevada to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Montana. William K. Wyckoff is an associate professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University. He is the author of The Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape and of articles in many journals, including The California Geographer, Social Science Journal, Geographical Review, and Journal of Historical Geography. Lary M. Dilsaver is a professor in the Department of Geology and Geography, University of South Alabama. The author, with William Tweed, of Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, he has also written articles in journals such as Geographical Review, Annals of Tourism Research, and Yearbook of the Association of Pacific CoastGeographers.

A Life Wild and Perilous

A Life Wild and Perilous
Author: Robert M. Utley
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1627798838

“[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier.” —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book Review Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders—such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith—opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. These and other Mountain Men opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845–1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands—thus making the Pacific Ocean America’s western boundary.