Jedediah Smith: Mountain Man of the American West - Book

Charles W. Maynard's 24-page hardcover is part of PowerKids Press's Famous Explorers of the American West series for young readers. Its subject, Jedediah Smith (1799-1831), joined William Ashley and Andrew Henry's fur trading venture in 1822. Over the next nine years he trapped and explored across the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest and the Pacific coast.

Smith's party was the first group of U.S. citizens to cross the Mojave Desert into California, and on the way back the first to cross the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin. He later traveled north from California overland to the Oregon Country, and his explorations helped make South Pass the main route across the Continental Divide for later emigrants.