Jim Bridger, just eighteen, had been working in St. Louis as a blacksmith when he joined William H. Ashley’s Missouri River Expedition. It was his introduction to the West, and he spent the next twenty years as a trader and fur trapper in Idaho, Colorado, and Utah.
The fur trade began to die in the 1840s, leaving many of the mountain men such as Bridger at loose ends. But Oregon Territory had been opened in 1841, and Fort Laramie was the only major outpost between Independence and the end of two thousand miles of treacherous trail. Having long traded with the friendly Shoshones, Jim Bridger—aided by another mountain man, Louis Vasquez—built a trading post on Black’s Fork, where it fed into the Green. Bridger believed it would be a godsend to the Oregon-bound emigrants on the trail west, while drawing regular trade from Wyoming’s friendly tribe, the Wind River Shoshones. Bridger’s trading post prospered for four years.
It was time for Mormons to find a home, and Brigham Young chose a remote spot in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Preparations were made for the Saints to migrate by wagon and on foot with handcarts to carry their goods across a little-known wilderness.
But trouble lay ahead. In July 1847, the first settlers arrived at what is now Salt Lake City. They built shelters, planted crops, and through irrigation the desert began to thrive and blossom. But Gentiles—the name for non-Mormons—began arriving, and when gold was discovered in California, things went from bad to worse. Gold seekers, attempting to avoid the crossing of the treacherous South Pass, passed through territory Mormons saw as their own.
After numerous clashes with Mormons, Bridger realized he must give up his trading post. There were good reasons for Bridger’s decision. First, there was the ever-present danger from militant Mormons, who were now within just a few miles of the trading post. Second, the army was planning to build more forts in the western territories. Third, the railroad would be coming, eliminating most of the need for frontier outposts, private or government-owned. The Union Pacific Railroad would open up the nation to commerce with the High Plains.
In the spring of 1853, what Jim Bridger had foreseen came to pass. He and Louis Vasquez fled the trading post just ahead of a horde of Mormons who overran the trading post and captured it. Eventually, the trading post—or fort—would be sold to the United States government, and it would take soldiers to dislodge the Mormons. But as Bridger and Vasquez rode out for the last time, Bridger was content. He had become weary of being a storekeeper, and in the back of his mind was the lush graze along Green River in northeastern Utah. There a man could build a cattle or horse ranch that would be the envy of the frontier, if he chose to do so.
The territory was rich in minerals. Coal, lead, gold, and silver were to be produced in great amounts, but the area developed slowly because of conflict that ensued between Mormons and the federal government. But copper was the chief metal. Bingham Canyon had the largest open-pit copper mine in the country. But both mining and smelting were controlled by big eastern-owned companies, resulting in a Mormon distrust of industrialization. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican War, the region passed to the United States, and a large area, of which the present state is a part, became Utah Territory. Congressional acts forbidding polygamy were passed in 1862, 1882, and 1887. Not until the religious group discontinued the practice did the territory become the state of Utah. The year was 1896.