American Pioneer Series #2 - Jedediah Smith
Born to a family of modest means in Bainbridge, New York, Jedediah Smith sought to make his own way.
“I wanted to be the first to view a country on which the eyes of a white man had never gazed and to follow the course of rivers that run through a new land.”
So he did. In 1822, at the tender age of 23, Smith followed the call of an advertising for “One Hundred Enterprising Young Men” to explore and trap in the Rocky Mountains.
Only 4 years later he led a group of trappers on his first trip to California. On the way he had run -ins with a grizzly bear (he lost an ear), Mohave Indians and eventually Mexican authorities in the mission west of what is present-day Los Angeles.
Over the course of many years, Smith’s explorations opened the American West and involved many firsts, including being the first white man to cross what would become the states of Utah and Nevada and the first to enter California on the overland route.