Heinz,
The reason that I believe that Jim Bridger is the greatest American that ever lived is as follows:
1. He lived the life of the public imagination through many generations. He went to the fur trade frontier when every youth dreamed of becoming a mountain man, and he became comtemporarily famous in that roll and eventually owned the famous fur company to which he was employed as a youth.
2. He discovered the South Pass to the Continental Divide now know as Bridger's Pass in Southern Wyoming.
3. He was one of the discoverers of the Yellowstone Basin.
4. He established a trading post on the Oregon Trail whenever the trail was the fantasy for all Americans of establishing a new prosperous life. His store was a vital landmark on the contemporary Oregon Trail.
5. The government bought his trading post and established Fort Bridger, Wyoming.
6. He became a very famous Indian scout for the Army during the removal of the tribes from the Great Plains. All of America was caught up in the excitement of the Indian wars. Bridger was preferred and requested by the commanders as scout for the Army over any other scout including Kit Carson. He guided more wagon trains than all other scouts put together on the westward trek.
7. Whenever the railroads were to connect the nation by laying track over the West, Bridger was hired to help the Union Pacific map a route through the Bighorn Mountains.
8. And he spoke not only English, French and Spanish, but six Indian tongues as well. And he was a chief of five Indian tribes.
9. He was famous in his own day for living the glamor of the American frontier and rode the tidal wave of advancing civilization! And lived a long life and died in peace in his old age.
10. A national park was named in honor of him Bridger Nat'l Forest.
11. There are twenty places named for Jim Bridger.
To be the equivalent today a man would have to be a western-cowboy movie star, then a rock and roll singer, then an astronaut, then president, & then the founder of Microsoft.
Jediah Strong Smith, Joe Meek, and John Wesley Hardin were single event men, and not multi-dimensional.
