Beyond the Mountains: Jim Bridger’s Forgotten Business in New Santa Fe

By Diane Euston

  The Wild West- tall tales of cowboys, Native Americans, fur trappers and traders. So many stories were shared about men who swapped the bustling east for the barren west. They craved the mystery of uncharted territory- the want and need to establish something- to find something.   

They wanted to change their destiny.

  To take such a risk when the dangers were so prevalent cannot be understated. And before the mass influx of families traveling the old trails out west, men years before them carved out and documented the best way to get there.

  Two of these men, Jim Bridger (1804-1881) and Louis Vasquez (1798-1868), were bold, fearless and driven by the adventure of the unknown. While others sought out land to settle permanently, these men were ahead on the trails, living in the mountains and building posts that the government and later families seeking a new life relied upon in the middle of nowhere.

  I could outline the full history of these trailblazers – of these mountain men. But there’s plenty of material out there about both of them. It’s the stories connected to where we live now that intrigues me to the core, and Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez didn’t just travel, literally, over mountains.

  They were businessmen. And these two men chose well after their decades living in the west to settle in Jackson County in what is now known as south Kansas City. When their bodies slowed down and their ability to serve as guides on the trails subsided, they opted to open a business at the western edge of the United States in the town of New Santa Fe. 

  The story of this business and the later life of Bridger is something worth exploring.

Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez, Famed Mountain Men

  James Felix Bridger, nicknamed “Old Gabe” by his closest companions, was born in 1804 in Virginia to James and Chloe Bridger. When he was a young child, he and his family moved to the St. Louis area in an area known as Six Mile Prairie where his father was an innkeeper and land surveyor.

   By the time he was about 13 years old, he had lost his entire family, leaving him out to fight on his own. He was uneducated in a formal setting and illiterate. Jim was apprenticed to a St. Louis blacksmith and worked on flatboats ferrying over the Mississippi River but grew restless.

  In 1822, he answered an advertisement placed by businessman and fur trader William Ashley published in the Missouri Republican asking for 100 “enterprising young men.” These men would head west to the head of the Missouri River, and the adventure for an 18-year-old was just what he craved. 

  Jim Bridger never looked back. He fur trapped, traded with the Native Americans and was fluent in several Native American languages, conversational French, and Spanish.

  Pierre Louis Vasquez (born 1798 in St. Louis), our lesser known of the two profiles, is, on paper, the one from a prominent upbringing. His father, Benito, born in Spain, was one of the “first families” of St. Louis. His mother was of French Creole origin. Louis’ native tongue was French, although he, too, was fluent in multiple languages. Bernard DeVoto in “Across the Wide Missouri” refers to Vasquez as “of aristocratic birth. . . and bits of aristocratic elegance clung onto him in the mountains like cottonwood fluff.”

  There were some roadblocks and a learning curve for young Jim Bridger. Just one year into his exploration near the Grand River in current-day South Dakota, fellow mountainman Hugh Glass (c.1783-1833) was attacked by a grizzly bear. Two men, one being 19-year-old naïve Jim Bridger, were left to attend the dying Glass. Thinking he would never survive, Bridger helped dig a shallow grave for the man and left him behind.

  Hugh was likely pretty angry at Bridger after he was deserted and survived a 200-mile journey to Fort Kiowa.

  Hugh Glass did, indeed, face Bridger. One account of the confrontation states, “[Bridger] kept entirely to himself, unapproachable as a wild animal crawling off to lick its wounds. . . He knew only that he had done a cowardly thing.”

  By 1824, Jim Bridger was credited with “founding” the Great Salt Lake. In that same year, the South Pass was blazed by a small group of men, including none other than Vasquez and Bridger.

    Jim first married a Flathead woman named Cora. Their oldest child, a girl named Mary Ann (b. cir. 1836) was sent to a mission school in Oregon where she was killed in a Cayuse Indian massacre in 1847.  

  His wife died about 1846, leaving him with a two-year-old named Felix and a baby girl named Josephine. He sent them to St. Charles, Mo. where they were both educated at Sacred Heart Academy.

  In 1843, Bridger and Vasquez established Fort Bridger in Wyoming, designed to be a stop for supplies and provisions for those traveling on the Oregon Trail.

  This is when the true partnership of Bridger and Vasquez blossomed.

  In striking contrast to Bridger’s three marriages to Native American women (first to a woman named Cora, the second to a Ute Indian and the third to Mary Washakie), Vasquez remained single until the ripe old age of 49. 

  In 1847, he wed the widow Narcissa Burdette Land in St. Louis. Narcissa was not a fan of Bridger’s new wife, the Ute Indian “squaw,” and they fought constantly. At this time, the men would have cohabitated a single residence at Fort Bridger, living under close quarters with growing children and two women from very different backgrounds.

  William Kelly visited Fort Bridger in June 1849 and wrote about his experience visiting with the mountainmen and their wives. “Mr. Bridger, with a taste differing from [Vasquez], made his selection from among the ladies of the wilderness – a stolid, fleshy, round-headed woman, not oppressed with lines of beauty. Her hair was intensely black and straight,” Kelly wrote.

  Just 18 days after Kelly’s entry on July 4, 1849, she passed away while giving birth to a daughter named Virginia. Jim kept his little girl alive by giving her buffalo milk, and at the age of seven, she was also sent to the school in St. Charles.

Bridger’s Farm 

  By the 1850s, the relationship with the Mormons was questionable and the men opted to sell the fort in Wyoming to them, although some accounts say they were never paid. Raising young children on the frontier was not an ideal situation, so by this time the men decided to move to the Jackson County, Mo. area and settle into a much more stable life- with separate homes.

  Jim married a Shoshone woman named Mary and around 1855, both Bridger and Vasquez traveled to Jackson County. Bridger continued to whet his appetite of the west by traveling as a scout. According to his daughter Virginia (1849-1933), he was sometimes gone as long as three years.

  Bridger and Vasquez both had residences in Westport (Bridger’s home there was built by Col. A.G. Boone), and a lot of the history books highlight this; however, both men purchased farms not too far away from one another. Bridger’s farm, now partially marked across from St. Joseph’s Hospital on Carondelet Drive, went as far north as Watts Mill and as far south as Glen Arbor Road, just past Red Bridge Road. Vasquez’s farm shared a property line with the great-great grandson of Daniel Boone and is bordered by Bannister Road on the south and 91st street on the north.

  The land he purchased was in the shadows of the Fitzhugh-Watts Mill, a well-known landmark of the era, and he became very good friends with Stubbins Watts (1838-1922) who ran the mill after serving in the Confederacy and the death of his father.

  According to Bridger’s daughter, Virginia, he purchased 375 acres that were under cultivation and had several hundred more in timber. He was quite proud of his orchard, and Stubbins Watts’ children, Lizzie and Edgar, later recalled the white farmhouse facing north.

  The Kansas City Star reported, “It was a big house for those days, with a large central hall, two huge rooms on either side downstairs and two on the second floor, with a fireplace in each and a one story part of several rooms to the south. Tradition has it that Bridger bought the home in Westport, tore it down, and moved it to his farm. Across the front was a two-story porch, running the length of the house. It was a great place for dances and neighbors gathered there for parties and holidays.”

  That home was built, according to his daughter, with material purchased from William Bernard (1823-1906), a storekeeper in Westport when he tore down his original home near Westport to build a brick structure.

Vasquez, Bridger & Watts

   By the time he settled on his farm, the town of New Santa Fe (at current-day State Line Road and Santa Fe Trail) had burst out of the very seams of the Missouri-Kansas border and was outfitting travelers on the trails to the west. 

  With the help of George Kemper, Jim Bridger erected a building in the town of New Santa Fe. In a taped interview in the 1990s, Kenneth Klapmeyer (1907-2005), whose family also settled in the area in the 1850s, mentioned that an old foundation existed near the current “mortuary” (McGilley Funeral Home), and he stated, “The house burned down. There was a store in there some place long before us. Jim Bridger was involved.”

  Since I grew up in the shadows of the old town of New Santa Fe, the reference to Jim Bridger in the records piqued my interest in my earliest days of combing through records.

  In January 1853, a deed indicates that none other than Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez bought, $50 cash in hand (about $1500 in today’s money), lots 7 and 8 in New Santa Fe. 

  Back in the day, there was no such thing as building permits or business licensing. Trying to decipher what happened on a stretch of land is near impossible. But the evidence suggests an interesting business venture in this old, forgotten town.

  A year later, the two mountain men sold half of the lots for just over $170 – a substantial profit to their partner Josiah Watts (1824-1895), Stubbins Watts’ older brother. The sale of the land would lead many to believe that’s where the story ended for Jim Bridger’s time in New Santa Fe, but that wasn’t the case. These men were in business together.

  In August 1861, the Olathe Mirror published a summons because a business was suing for unpaid debts. “Lewis Vasquez, [James] Bridger, and Josiah Watts, doing business as Vasquez, Bridger & Watts, Plaintiffs, vs. T.S. Edwards, Defendant.”

  A trip to the Johnson County Archives to see the court case confirmed what I already knew in my gut; these men were in business together for many years. This was a big finding, as so much has been penned over the years about Jim Bridger’s life, and no one had discovered he was an active businessman in New Santa Fe or decoded what this business actually did.

  Just over 10 years ago, when I was newly exploring my love of South Kansas City by researching in my spare time and writing a blog, I drove to the Johnson County Archives and was handed the original 1861 file of this court case. It wasn’t even microfilmed – it existed in its entirety inside a folder that was now in my hands.

  I stared down at the creamy white pages, the ink dried in perfect scrolls of cursive handwriting. These pages in my hands were transcribed over 150 years ago before the Civil War.

  The information involved in the court case is irrelevant, except it shed a little bit of light on some of the operations of a “trading” post. It became clear that one part of this business was to loan out money.

  In the two cases I was viewing, they traded a deed of land as security when a man, T.S. Edwards (who had fled and was nowhere to be found), needed a quick $212.45. Another case from 1860 correctly identifies the business owners as “Louis Vasquez, James Bridger and Josiah Watts.” In 1858, the business had loaned them $347.12- owed in 12 months. When they hadn’t paid, the business sued them for the land they used as collateral.

  In today’s terms, these early loans by Vasquez, Bridger & Watts, operated like a title loan business. The title loan companies of today aren’t the innovative engineers of the “strapped for cash” mantra! These men in the 1850s and 60s gave you a chance to pay your debt (with interest), and if you didn’t, they sued for the rights to the land. 

  But this was only one aspect of the business model. In a probate record for a man named Harrison S. Vivion (1813-1855), buried at the Blue Ridge Cemetery in current-day Grandview, invoices of various businesses were filed. While his estate was still being probated, his young daughter Elizabeth died in 1857. She was nine years old.

  Included in this probate is a bill dated “New Santa Fe, August 27, 1857” from none other than Vasquez, Bridger & Watts for funeral clothing for the young child. This confirms that the business also included some type of mercantile store as well.

  These two men, with the spirit of a younger, vibrant businessman named Josiah Watts, ran a store in New Santa Fe. Josiah himself was a bit of a trailblazer, partaking in the Gold Rush in 1849 and returning to the area known as New Santa Fe after this failed attempt at getting rich. A biography on his son states Josiah did have a business with Jim Bridger, another indication of his involvement in this lost history of the town. He left New Santa Fe in the height of the Border Wars and settled on a farm in Johnson County, where he died in 1895.

  One cannot help but wonder if the literal foundation of the old “Vasquez, Bridger & Watts” business in New Santa Fe can be rediscovered. In April 1965, a publication in the Jackson County Historical Society magazine written by Jessie Crosby Ragan stated, “One of the old store buildings was built by James Bridger and George W. Kemper. The store keeper of this store was J.P. Smith.”

  John Pope Smith died in 1857, and this store he operated also included the first masonic lodge in all of Jackson County. It is possible that this building was later the location of Bridger’s business. 

Bridger’s Later Life “Too Old to Work”

  Jim Bridger, even after his venture in New Santa Fe, opened a business at 504 Westport Road in a building he purchased in 1866 from Cyprian Chouteau, nestled right up to Boone’s Trading Post (current-day Kelly’s Westport Inn). Some to this day argue whether or not this building is actually older than Kelly’s because they were built within months of each other.

  He lived, restlessly, at his home near Watts Mill in his later years with his daughter Virginia and her husband on a neighboring parcel of land. He’d lost his third wife in 1857 when he was away in the mountains, and their son, William (1857-1887) stayed on the farm with his father.

  Bridger’s daughter, Virginia, wrote to Gen. Granville Dodge (1831-1916), an old friend of her father’s who was best known as the chief engineer under President Lincoln of the Transcontinental Railroad. The letter survives and details Bridger’s later life on his farm in South Kansas City.

  By about 1873, Jim’s health began to fail him and he was going blind. For a man who lived his life on the go, he was restless and was “never still one moment.” 

  Virginia bought her father a gentile old horse that he called “Ruff” and a foxhound he named “Sultan.” When he wanted out of the home, he would ask his daughter to saddle up his horse, and the old dog would go along. The horse would guide the old mountain man in his blindness, but sometimes they would get lost in the woods.

  “The strange part of it was the old faithful dog Sultan would come home and let us know that father was lost,” Virginia wrote. “The dog would bark and whine until I would go out and look for him, and lead him and the old horse home on the main road.”

  Mary Spruill Wright (1866-1953) “grew up across the road” from Bridger when he was an old man, and when she was about 10 years old, the neighborhood children would go visit him. “I shall always remember his kindly blue-gray eyes, and the stories he used to tell us of the mountains,” she told the Kansas City Star. “His son, Bill, played the violin, and the whole neighborhood used to come to dances at the Bridger home.”

  He’d often sit on his porch with his chin resting on his cane with his face turned toward the West.Bridger oftentimes said, “I wish I war back thar ‘mong the mountains agin. A man kin see so much farther in that country.”

Jim Bridger’s Lasting South Kansas City Legacy 

  He spent many days guiding his horse down to Watts Mill where he would sit for hours and talk with Stubbins Watts and spin his tall tales of the American West. They were such close friends that Bridger asked to be buried at the Watts Burial Ground (current-day 101st and Jefferson).

  On July 17, 1881, Jim Bridger passed away inside the Watts home and was buried a half-mile north of Watts Mill at the little cemetery. 

  In 1904, Jim Bridger’s remains were reinterred at Mount Washington Cemetery. In a Kansas City Star article from 1912, Stubbins Watts was asked why he allowed Bridger to be moved. He replied, “Well, it will only be a few years now till the city will build out over that old graveyard. . . It won’t be much longer till the city will come on out and take this mill, too.”

  Unfortunately, he was correct. The Watts family were removed to Stanley, Kan. to Pleasant Valley Cemetery. 

  When Stubbins Watts’ son, Edgar visited the original site of Bridger’s grave after it was removed in 1904, he found Bridger’s jaw bone as he was filling the hole with dirt. Enamored with the find and unsure how to proceed, Edgar took the jaw bone home and mentioned nothing of it to his aging father.

  Stubbins died in 1922, and before his casket was closed, Edgar took the jaw bone of Bridger’s and dropped it into his father’s casket.

  Edgar was reported to have said, “Well, they laughed and talked together so it seemed the fittin’ thing to do.”

  So much can be learned from these old mountain men and their dedication to the dreams they held.  I’m certainly glad that these trailblazers took the road less traveled and their journey included so much time on the land we pass by regularly in South Kansas City. 

  Gene Ceasar, author of “King of the Mountain Men: The Life of Jim Bridger” concluded, “(He) was the product of a young wild America, lost America, and there can never be another like him.”