An interesting visual and descriptive insight into Jedediah Smith, one of the great Mountain Men trappers who witnessed and experienced the zenith of the Rocky Mtn fur trade 1820-1840--great descriptions of beaver pelts secured and an acknowledgement that the Rockies was "darn near trapped out" by 1840

 

Jedediah Smith and America's Western Expansion and Exploration by
O. Ned Eddins

Jedediah Strong Smith was born in the Susquehanna Valley of New York in 1799. Jedediah was ten years old, when the Smith family moved westward to Erie County, Pennsylvania. The local doctor took a liking to Jedediah. Dr. Titus Simons, who become a close family friend, helped Jedediah with his education and gave him a copy of the 1814 Biddle edition of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. When Jedediah Smith's family moved again to the Western Reserve country of Ohio. Jedediah Smith struck out for the frontier. According to some, Jedediah carried two books—the Bible and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

James C. Auld wrote an excellent article in the 2008 Journal of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade questioning where the piety and bible toting image of Jedediah Smith originated.

                                                                      Jedediah Strong Smith 1899 -1831
Not long after reaching St. Louis, Jedediah  learned that the lieutenant governor of Missouri, William H. Ashley, and a veteran fur trader, Major Andrew Henry, had formed a partnership to trap beaver on the upper Missouri. Ashley had placed an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette: 
 
Smith quickly signed on—this was his way west. At the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri river, Major Henry built a second Fort Henry. From there, Maj. Henry sent a small party farther upriver to winter near the mouth of the Musselshell and Missouri rivers. During the winter, both parties lost horses to the Assiniboine.
When the Musselshell party returned  in the spring to Fort Henry, Major Henry sent Jedediah Smith downriver to find Ashley and tell him  they needed more horses at Fort Henry. Below the three Arikara villages, Smith found Ashley coming upriver with the supply boat . The Arikara villages were located on the Missouri River near the mouth of the Grand River.
                                  
                                             Arikara Village - George Catlin

                                                                 Arikara Lodge

               
                                             
                                            Fort Atkinson Barracks 1819 -1827 

 At the post, Ashley outfitted a party of eleven men under Jedediah Smith to travel overland to the Rocky Mountains. Among the men were Thomas Fitzpatrick, William Sublette, Jim Clyman, Thomas Eddie, Edward Rose, Stone, and Branch. The other three men's names have been lost to history.

Near the Black Hills, Smith was attacked by a grizzly bear. After the bear was killed, Smith gave directions as Clyman stitched up the gaping wounds. James Clyman left a vivid description of the encounter:

Grissly did not hesitate a moment but sprang on the capt taking him by the head first pitc[h]ing sprawling on the earth…breaking several of his ribs and cutting his head badly…the bear had taken nearly all his head in his cap[a]cious mouth close to his left eye on one side and clos to his right ear on the other and laid the skull bare to near the crown of the head…one of his ears was torn from his head out to the outer rim…

                                                                 Wind River
In February, Smith attempted to cross Union Pass to the head of the Green River , but the snow was too deep.

                                             Union Pass - Elevation 9,228 Feet
Returning to the Crow camp, warriors told Smith about a broad open pass at the end of the Wind River Mountains. In March of 1824, Jedediah Smith's party followed the Sweetwater River to South Pass and on into the Green River Valley—Robert Stuart's    discovery of South Pass had been largely forgotten, and Jedediah Smith is credited with the effective discovery of South Pass.

                                                    South Pass - Elevation 7,473 Feet
Jedediah Smith split the party in two. He left Fitzpatrick and five men to trap the Green River Valley. The two parties were to rendezvous on the Sweetwater River in mid-summer.

                                       Beaver Dam  - North Horse Creek
Fitzpatrick's men stayed in  the valley of the Seed-kee-dee (Prairie Chicken River or Green River)--Indians stole Fitzpatrick's horses on Horse Creek and this is where the name comes from. Thomas Fitzpatrick and his men had a good hunt, and by July were back on the Sweetwater River to meet the Smith Party. When Jedediah Smith didn't show up, Fitzpatrick, Stone, and Branch started down the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers with a boatload of furs—the hollowed-out boat tipped over in Devils Gate. The furs were recovered and dried before being cached. The three men struggled across the open Plains to Fort Atkinson. At Fort Atkinson, Fitzpatrick sent a dispatch to Ashley in St. Louis advising him of the rich beaver country west of the Wind River Mountains.

                                                           Devils Gate
A British diarist remarked:

One Jedediah S. Smith is at the head of them, a sly cunning Yankey.

In late June 1825, Smith arrived at Henry's Fork—near Burnt Fork, Wyoming—for the first mountain man rendezvous.

                                      1825 Rendezvous Burnt Fork, Wyoming
Ashley left the one day rendezvous on the second of  July. The furs gathered at the rendezvous came from Ashley's men, deserters from Peter Skeen Ogden, and Etienne Provost's men. Provost was a Taos trapper. An additional forty-five packs were picked up from a cache.
Andrew Henry had left the fur trade, and Ashley needed a new field partner. His choice was Jedediah Smith. Ashley and Smith took the furs  to the Bighorn River, and then floated them down the Bighorn to the Yellowstone where they met Atkinson-O'Fallon Expedition. The furs were loaded on a steamboat and taken to St. Louis.  The new partners took one hundred packs of furs back from the first rendezvous—on average a pack is sixty pelt pressed into a ninety pound bundle and tied.
In less than a month, Jedediah Smith left St. Louis for the mountains. Jedediah's fall hunt was in the Wyoming, Utah, Idaho area. Jedediah met Ashley at the 1826 Rendezvous held in Cache (Willow) Valley at Cove,  Utah--the 1826 site is disputed between Cove and Blacksmith Fork Canyon.

                                             1826 Rendezvous Cove, Utah
After the rendezvous, Jedediah Smith, William Sublette, and David E. Jackson met with Ashley on the Bend of the Bear River and bought Ashley's interests in the Ashley-Smith Company. The new partnership agreed to buy the rendezvous supplies through Ashley. After four years in the mountains, Jedediah Smith was now head of the dominate fur trade company in the Rocky Mountains.
In August, the three partners split up for the fall hunt. Smith, with seventeen men, pushed south to investigate the trapping potential south and west of the Great Salt Lake. This trek took Smith up Spanish Fork Canyon—through Castle Valley—over the mountains to Richfield—then over the mountains to Cove Fort. Except this detour through Castle Valley—then I-70 to Cove—Smith followed I-15 through Utah to the Virgin River (Brooks).

                                                             Smith Map of 1826 - 1827
Smith followed the Virgin River to its confluence with the Colorado River. He crossed the river and continued south to the Mojave villages.
                                                 Smith Butte - Mojave Desert

                                              Rock Springs - Mojave Desert

                                                 Soda Lake - Mojave Desert
It took two weeks to cross the barren, blazing desert before reaching San Bernardino Valley. Spanish Priests welcomed them at the San Gabriel Mission-near present-day Los Angles.
Smith's clerk, Harrison Rogers, described it:

…great feasting among the men. … I was introduced to the 2 Priests over a glass of good old whiskey—and found them to be very Joval friendly gentlemen… . Plenty of good wine during supper, before the cloth was removed sigars was introduced… . Friendship and peace prevail with us and the Spanyards….

Smith was called to San Diego were he was questioned by the Mexican governor. Backed by Captain Cunningham of the schooner Courier and other Yankee sea captains in port, Smith eventually convinced the governor that he sought only beaver. The governor ordered Smith to take his men and leave the same way as they had come into California.

                                                     Ebbetts Pass - Elevation 8,715 Feet
Smith, Gobel, and Evans left on the twentieth of May, 1827, with seven horses and two mules. Smith crossed the Sierras over Ebbett's Pass then skirting Walker Lake, before heading into the Great Basin.
           
                                                               Great Basin
Smith recorded on his map:

This plain is a waste of sand with a few detached mountains some of which are in the region of perpetual snow…a few Indians are scattered over the plain, the most miserable objects in creation.

Smith's journal leaves a terrifying picture of the desert journey. From a high hill, he wrote:

I could discover nothing but sandy plains or dry Rocky hills…I durst not tell my men of the desolate prospect ahead…. With our best exertion we pushed forward, walking as we had been for a long time over the soft sand…worn down with hunger and fatigue and burning with thirst increased by the blazing sands…it then seemed possible and even probable we might perish in the desert unheard of and unpitied. My dreams were not of Gold or ambitious honors but of my distant quiet home, of murmuring brooks of Cooling Cascades.

                                                     Great Salt Lake Desert

                                                1827 Rendezvous - Bear Lake Utah
After the 1827 rendezvous, Smith eighteen men and two French-Canadian women set out for California. Based on his previous experience, Smith took seven hundred pounds of dried buffalo meat. Except a detour through the Bear River Valley and across the mountains and down the Weber River, Smith followed present day I-15 to southern Utah. Instead of going through the Virgin River Gorge, Smith followed an Indian trail from Santa Clara over Utah Hill to Beaver Dam Wash then followed it to the Virgin River.

                                                          Smith's Route 1827 - 1828 - 1829
Crossing the Colorado River, the party continued on to the Mojave Village. After spending three days at the village, Smith and eight men swam the horses and took the supplies across on rafts. With Smith and eight men on the other side of the river, the Mojave attacked and killed the men on their side of the river, including Silas Gobel and the two women—unbeknown to Smith, several Mojave warriors had been killed the previous winter by trappers from Taos led by Ewing Young.

Smith was determined not to leave California empty-handed. The beaver pelts and a few otter skins were sold to the Captain of the schooner Franklin for thirty-nine hundred and twenty dollars. With the money, Smith purchased three hundred and thirty horses and mules to sell at the next years rendezvous.

As most of the trappers contract with the company had expired, Smith re-engaged the trappers at one dollar per day—most historians claim the Ashley men were the more glamorous free trappers…but…they were hired in St. Louis by Ashley and again by Smith in California.

                 
                                                     Fort Vancouver 1829
At the time of the attack, Smith had two hundred and twenty-eight horses and mules, seven hundred and eight beaver pelts, fifty to sixty otter skins, two hundred pounds of beads, one hundred pounds of other goods, and camp equipment. 

                                                Pierre's Hole - Teton River
Not long after the Smith and Jackson parties reached Pierre's Hole, William Sublette arrived with a pack train from the 1829 Rendezvous on the Popo Agie—With beaver getting harder to find and prices dropping, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette decided it was time to leave the mountains. At the 1830 Rendezvous on the Wind River, the three partners sold their company to Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and Jean Gervias. The partners agreed Sublette would remain the rendezvous supplier. The new company was named the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

This is the only time in the history of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade that a company was actually named the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

                                                 1830 Wind River Rendezvous