BRIDGER, Janice, trader, explorer, scout andguide; b. Richmond, Va., 1806; d. Washing ton, Jackson County Mo., 1881. In 1820, at the age of 16 he was already known as a scout and successful hunter, and was soon admitted as a partner in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which he furnished with the pelts obtained by himself and a band of men that he led in the pursuit of game through the mountain regions of Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho and the Utahs. A pioneer explorer and discoverer, gifted as a topographical cartographer, °Jim Bridger's lies° became almost proverbial over the descriptions he was the first to give of the geysers and natural wonders of the Yellowstone Park and the Great Salt Lake, until they were verified by subsequent travelers. Fort Bridger on the Black fork of the Green River in Um tah County, Wyo., is the site of the stock ade and residence which he built and where he lived with his Shoshone Indian wife for sev eral years. The town of Bridger nearby on the Union Pacific Railroad is also named after him. During 1832-35 he served as guide to the
exploring expedition described in Captain Ben jamin Bonneville's journal, edited by Wash ington Irving. In 1862 he was guide to the military escort of the two judges appointed to the territorial supreme court of Utah. In 1868 he acted in an advisory capacity to General Sheridan in his campaign against hostile In dians. Bridger passed the last years of his life chiefly in Missouri. Besides Fort Bridger and the town of Bridger, Wyo., his name is per petuated in Bridgcr's Peak of the Gallatin Range, Gallatin County, Mont., 9,000 feet high; and Bridger's Pass, a defile 2,500 feet deep in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyo ming. Styled °the Daniel Boone of the Rocky Mountains,° he was a prominent figure for half a century in the early modern history and development of the region. Consult Dodge, Gen. M. Grenville, 'Life of James (1900).