Fort Bridger

“I have established a small fort, with a blacksmith shop and a supply of iron in the road of the emigrants on Black Fork of Green River, which promised fairly.”

That was how Jim Bridger, mountain man, described his new venture, a trading post, in a letter to would-be Eastern investors in 1843.  

Fort Bridger by William Henry Jackson

"Fairly?"  Bridger understated his case.  His Eastern friends should have jumped on his business proposal.  Not only did the location promise “fairly,” it became one of the main hubs of westward expansion used by trappers, Indians, emigrants, the U. S. Army, the Pony Express, the Overland Stage and the Union Pacific Railroad.  

It was here that the Oregon Trail turned northwest while the Mormon and the California trails continued on their way. 

Tim and I expected Fort Bridger to be a bigger town.  After all, the fort was Wyoming’s second largest post after Fort Laramie, but the city limit marker noted a population of only 345 people.  Our campground, suitably named Fort Bridger RV Park, and the fort seemed to be the sum total of the town.  That was convenient.  In no time, we'd hooked up our RV, the Dawntreader, to the utilities and meandered over to the fort, all in time for the 2 p.m. tour.

Our tour guide Kim was a fifth generation inhabitant of the area and very knowledgeable about its history.  Of great interest was the Utah War (1857-1858), a conflict whose history was new to me.  Mormon settlers, determined to separate Utah from the United States thereby creating an independent nation where they would be free from religious persecution, blocked the army’s entrance into the Salt Lake Valley.  Scorch and burn was their militia’s strategy to hinder the soldiers as they approached.  They stampeded the army’s horses, set fire to their supply wagons and tried to burn the whole country before them.   Approximately 126 civilians were killed.  In the end, negotiations between the United States and the Mormons resulted in a full pardon, the transfer of governorship from church President Brigham Young to non-Mormon Alfred Cumming, and the peaceful entrance of the U.S. Army into Utah.

A sculpture of Jim Bridger

But I digress--back to the fort whose ownership had fallen into dispute.  Mormons claimed that Jim Bridger sold the flourishing property to them while Bridger argued that it was stolen from him while he was back in Missouri.  Regardless, the post passed to the U.S. Army in 1858 and served as a military outpost until it was abandoned in 1890.

Early the next morning, Tim and I, too, abandoned Fort Bridger.  We had a six-hour trip ahead of us before we would reach our next campground.  Skedaddle, Dawntreader!