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

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

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 roa

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 unknow

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 Willia