FAR SIDE OF THE MOUNTAINS

Bronze, 40″H x 38″L x 14″D, Limited Ed. of 35 – Created 2013

Vic continues to pay homage to the men who first traveled into the unknown lands west of the Missouri with his Explorers of the West series. We are familiar with the lives and stories of Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, John Colter, and Kit Carson: men who became national heroes in their own time, earning a place in our country’s history. Yet, often overlooked is the obscure story of a nearly forgotten early explorer by the name of Jedediah Smith. Through extensive research, Vic learned that Jedediah Smith (January 6, 1799-May 27, 1831), was one of America’s greatest trapper-explorers of the Rocky Mountains, the American West Coast, and the Southwest.

Jedediah Smith grew up hunting and trapping in the forests of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. A local doctor took interest in his education and gave him a copy of the 1814 edition of Lewis and Clark’s Expedition. This book spurred in him a desire to explore the unmapped and untamed lands of the West and explore the ‘Far Side of the Mountains.’ In 1822, Jedediah read a St. Louis newspaper advertisement the lieutenant governor of Missouri, William H. Ashley placed. Ashley was hiring 100 men to go up the Missouri River to trap beaver in the new territory. Experienced in frontier skills, Jedediah answered the ad and joined the ground-breaking fur trader, Ashley, and quickly became one of his best explorers.

A few years later at Ashley’s request, Smith along with a small band of men, set out to explore the Black Hills region of the Dakotas while looking to obtain fresh horses from a Crow tribe. While traveling along the Cheyenne River, Jedediah was stalked and attacked by a large grizzly bear. Miraculously, Jedediah survived the gruesome attack thereafter wearing his hair long to cover the large facial scar that ran from his eyebrow to his ear.

Few may realize that among Jedediah’s greatest discoveries was the rediscovery of South Pass. He was the first American, after the Astorians, to explore west over the Continental Divide. South Pass quickly became the preferred route used by settlers bound for Oregon and California a few years later, greatly aiding the mass emigration to the Far West. This alone could have secured Jedediah as one of the great explorers of the American West. However, during the following decade, Smith also explored the Great Salt Lake, the Colorado Plateau, and led the first expedition to cross the Southwest to California-all before he was 30 years old.

Surviving three massacres’, one bear mauling, and many other intrepid journeys, Jedediah decided it was time to leave the fur business behind in 1830. He turned his attention to becoming a merchant trader. In 1831, while leading a trading caravan along the Santa Fe Trail, Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanche Indians at a watering hole near the Cimarron River. He was 32 years old, dying before he could publish any of his journals or maps.