BRIDGER IN BRONZE

Scattered across the Western United States are sculptures of varying size, accuracy and style that help define one of the archetypal figures of the 19th-century American frontier—the mountain man, whose heyday came during the 1825–40 height of the Rocky Mountain fur trade era.

While period writings, artwork and even photographs survive, the varying degrees of rigor with which sculptors have researched the mountain man—what he looked like, what clothing he wore, the firearms he used and what other equipment he relied on for survival and his livelihood—have resulted in works on a sliding scale between realism and inspired romanticism. The most diligent sculptors have drawn details from the surviving images and written accounts of those who lived and worked as fur trappers, explorers, guides and surveyors. Of course, each sculptor’s own inspired vision also factors into his work.

Several sculptors have rendered statues of Jim Bridger, arguably the most famous of all American mountain men. Virginia-born James Felix Bridger (March 17, 1804–July 17, 1881) made his mark as a trapper, U.S. Army scout, wilderness guide and pathfinder in the decades after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s groundbreaking 1804–06 Corps of Discovery expedition to the Pacific Coast. Among other milestones, Bridger was one of the first frontiersmen to explore the Yellowstone region and the Great Salt Lake. In his last year Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), the “Cowboy Artist,” sculpted the lost-wax bronze (see P. 71), which depicts the mountain man on horseback, clean-shaven, wearing fringed buckskins and