KING OF THE MOUNTAIN MEN

The story of the great mountain man Jim Bridger, of his travels beyond the Green River into the virgin west, and of his trapper-guide friends Jed Smith, Kit Carson, Bill Sublette, etc., is as colorful an epic as any in the history of our country. This attempt to retell it is a worthy and highly readable one. From the day in 1822 when Bridger left with the Falstaff Battalion up the Missouri, until he died, blind and broke, 60 years later, an unforgettable era had come and gone. Here were the trappers, the Indian fights, the life and morality of a truly wild west, the coming of Fremont and other civilizers, the Mormon insurrections, and finally the savage Indian wars of the 60's and 70's.