Title: A life wild and perilous
Description: Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the Trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions.

Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality in 1803-1805, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness of the American West. Collectively, they came to know every stream, mountain crag, canyon cataract, waterless stretch of plain, refuge of game, and Indian hideout.
Subjects: Biography, Discovery and exploration, Frontier and pioneer life, Fur trade, Fur traders, History, Overland journeys to the Pacific, Pioneers, Trappers, America, discovery and exploration, United states, biography, United states, exploring expeditions, Mountain life
Places: West (U.S.)
Time periods: To 1848