Jim Bridger
Photo © Neal Ulevich. All rights reserved.
Jim Bridger, mountain man, trapper and guide, was perhaps first among equals in the western expansion of the first half of the 19th century. Mountain men lived a life "wild and perilous," as Historian Francis Parkman aptly said, and many met an early end. But Bridger retired to Missouri and was 77 when he died July 17, 1881. He is buried at Mt. Washington Cemetery, Independence, Missouri.