Author: William Henry Jackson
Softcover
 
Book description
Though frequently overshadowed by Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, Jedediah Strong Smith's achievements were equally compelling. During his eight years in the West, Jedediah Smith discovered South Pass- the gateway to Oregon.  He was the first man to reach California by traveling overland from the American Frontier, the first to cross the Sierra Nevada, the first to travel the length and breadth of the Great Basin, and the first to reach Oregon by exploring up the coast from California. He explored more of the Far West than any man of his time- from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean- from Canada to the Gulf of California.
 
Jedediah Smith survived the three worst disasters of the American fur trade: the Arikara defeat of 1823, the Mojave massacre of 1827, and the Umpqua massacre of 1828, in which no less than forty men fell around him- only to die a lonely death at the hands of the Comanche on the trail to Santa Fe at the age of 32.
 
Having packed such a staggering amount of achievement into the years between his twenty-third and thirty-third, Jedediah Smith is an authentic American hero. In a strange aftermath, Jedediah Smith dead, has had to fight for survival in the American memory with the same tenacity he took to his struggle for physical survival in the Far West. For over one hundred years primary records of Jedediah Smith's exploits were thought to have died the same lonely death in the wilderness . Now the energy and passion which infused his life and work, overlooked for one hundred years, were finally brought to light for all to see.