"JIM BRIDGER stands forth as the most conspicuous figure in the brief but glorious reign of the trapper and trail maker in the far West--the greatest furhunter and the greatest pathfinder of them all."

In 1906, Western author Arthur Chapman published a 10-page article in the Western magazine "Outing" on Jim Bridger the famous mountain man. Though somewhat brief, this article is important as it is one of the few contemporary accounts of Jim Bridger and thus has been republished here for the interested reader.

Jim Bridger (1804 – 1881) may be most famous for being, as a youth, one of the two mountain men who abandoned famed trapper Hugh Glass after he had been mauled by a grizzly bear, as detailed in the movie the The Revenant. Bridger was an American mountain man, trapper, Army scout and wilderness guide who explored and trapped the Western United States in the first half of the 19th century. Bridger is known for participating in numerous early expeditions into the western interior as well as mediating between Native American tribes and encroaching European-American settlers, and by the end of his life had earned a reputation as one of the foremost frontiersmen in the American Old West. Bridger was part of the second generation of American mountain men and pathfinders that followed the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804. As Chapman notes in this article: "The influence of the Maker of Trails remains, and must remain for always."

About the author:

Arthur Chapman (1873 – 1935) was an early twentieth-century American author of Westerns, newspaper columnist and cowboy poet. He wrote a subgenre of American poetry known as Cowboy Poetry. His most famous poem was Out Where the West Begins. His books include:

Mystery Ranch (1921)

John Crews (1926)

The Story of Colorado, Out Where the West Begins (1924)

The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic Adventure in Business (1932)