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    Fort Bridger
    Fort Bridger
    Fort Bridger
    Ebook192 pages44 minutes

    Fort Bridger

    By Ephriam D. Dickson III and Mark J. Nelson

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    About this ebook

    The history of Fort Bridger represents a microcosm of the development of the American West. Situated in an area initially inhabited by the Shoshone people, Fort Bridger was established during a transitional phase between the fur-trade era and the period of western migration. The fort became one of the most important supply points along the nation s western trail network. Later, the post served as a bastion of civilization as one of a number of western military posts. Soldiers at the fort protected not only the lives and property of its local citizenry but also the emerging transportation and communication advancements of a nation. Following the Army s departure, a small settlement emerged at Fort Bridger, using buildings and materials from the old military garrison. Today, the fort and town remain active, in part as a respite for travelers just as it had been more than 150 years ago.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 18, 2014
    ISBN9781439646793
    Fort Bridger
    Author

    Ephriam D. Dickson III

    Ephriam D. Dickson III, former curator at the Fort Douglas Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, now serves as an education specialist at the National Museum of the United States Army located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Mark J. Nelson is a retired museum curator who spent time at the historic site as a summer seasonal and site manager. The authors have incorporated photographs from a number of sources but have relied most heavily on the collections of the Wyoming State Archives.

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      Book preview

      Fort Bridger - Ephriam D. Dickson III

      post.

      INTRODUCTION

      During the 19th century, commercial photographers traveled throughout the West in an effort to secure images for sale to an interested public back East. Despite its remote location in southwestern Wyoming, Fort Bridger witnessed a number of these itinerate artists stopping briefly to set up their cameras and record portraits and landscape views.

      John W. Jones passed through Fort Bridger in the fall of 1851 while producing a series of daguerreotypes along the trail from California; however, none of his images are known to have survived. During the Utah War of 1857–1858, David A. Burr fled from Salt Lake City with his father, the surveyor general for Utah Territory, and spent a portion of that winter at Fort Bridger and nearby Camp Scott. The 20-year-old photographer’s small number of surviving images show Army life in this cantonment of log cabins and tents. In 1858, photographer Samuel C. Mills accompanied the Army’s reinforcements to Utah as a member of Capt. James H. Simpson’s exploratory expedition. Passing through Fort Bridger in September 1858, he produced the earliest surviving view of the stone Mormon fort.

      During the 1860s, Fort Bridger was visited by several Salt Lake City photographers, including Charles R. Savage and Charles W. Carter, who were creating portfolios of Western views. Union Pacific photographer Andrew J. Russell also passed through Fort Bridger while documenting the railroad’s construction activities, and William Henry Jackson stopped here briefly in 1870 as part of a government survey. A small number of photographs have also survived from the camera of Pvt. Charles Howard, a soldier who operated a photographic gallery at Fort Bridger from about 1875 to 1877.

      Improvements in the technology soon put cameras in the hands of hobbyists. In the last years of Fort Bridger, several residents are known to have had small cameras, including a daughter of Judge Carter as well as Lt. Charles P. Stivers. By the early 20th century, further developments in cameras and film along with the completion of the Lincoln Highway and the birth of tourism made it possible for visitors to Fort Bridger to produce their own souvenir images of the historic post.

      Through the work of these early photographers, readers can now see Fort Bridger as they did, changing from a remote trading post to an emigrant way station, then from a frontier military post to a small ranching community.

      JIM BRIDGER. Born in Virginia, Bridger came West in 1822 at age 18 and spent the next two decades engaged in the fur trade. In 1843, he established a trading post on the Blacks Fork of the Green River that soon bore his name. (Courtesy Wyoming State Archives.)

      One

      BEFORE THE ARMY

      Rock art and stone artifacts testify to the fact that people have lived in southwestern Wyoming for thousands of years. By the early 18th century, a new wave of native people had pushed into the region from the west, forefathers of a tribe that eventually became known as the Shoshone. Over the next two centuries, this tribe expanded its influence eastward to the rich buffalo grounds of the northern plains. But by the late 18th century, successive waves of other native emigrants arriving from the east—including the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and finally the Lakota—pushed the Shoshone back into their mountain strongholds in present Wyoming.

      White fur traders arrived in the early 19th century. Seeking the pelts of the elusive beaver, these men plied the cold mountain streams throughout the Rocky Mountains. They gathered for the annual rendezvous, including several held in the Green River Valley, where they traded for supplies and enjoyed a raucous social gathering. Changes in styles back East, the importation of cheaper furs from South America, and the overhunting of beaver in the Rocky Mountains brought an end to the fur trade, leaving mountain men searching for new opportunities.

      After two decades as a fur trader, Jim Bridger decided to establish a trading post on the Blacks Fork along the newly developed emigrant road to the Pacific coast. By 1843, Fort Bridger offered a variety of supplies to passing wagon trains, as well as blacksmithing and replacement livestock. Edwin Bryant stopped here in July 1846, describing it as two or three miserable log-cabins, rudely constructed, and bearing but a faint resemblance to habitable houses. Several mountain men also operated toll ferries for emigrants crossing the Green River.

      The migration of Mormon converts to the Salt Lake Valley starting in 1847 altered events in the Fort Bridger area. In 1850, Fort Bridger was included within the boundaries of the newly created Utah Territory. Conflict between the mountain men and Mormon leadership over control of the ferries resulted in Brigham Young deciding to establish a community in the vicinity of the Green River and eventually assuming control of Fort Bridger itself.

      EASTERN SHOSHONE VILLAGE NEAR SOUTH PASS. With some access to Great Plains buffalo herds, the Eastern Shoshone depended upon their horses to move hide lodges and other household items as they migrated through the region. This photograph was taken by William Henry Jackson in 1870.

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