Smith, Jedediah Strong (1798–1831)

US fur trader, mountain man, and explorer. He was the first American to enter and exit California by the eastern route (over uncharted deserts), and the first to open up a coastal trade route between California and Oregon. In 1826 he led a fur-trapping expedition from Great Salt Lake, Utah, across the Mojave Desert into California, returning across the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Great Basin in 1827. Briefly imprisoned by the Mexican authorities on his return to California that year, he travelled north up the coast to Fort Vancouver, Oregon in 1828.

Smith was born in Bainbridge, New York. He took part in his first fur-trading expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1822; the group from St Louis, led by General William Ashley, explored the upper Missouri. Information from an American Indian Crow group, with whom he overwintered in 1823–24, led Smith to rediscover the South Pass route through present-day Wyoming to the Green River area of Utah in 1824. In 1830 he sold his Rocky Mountain interests to enter the Santa Fe trade, but was killed the following year by a band of American Indian Comanches on the Santa Fe Trail. Smith did not keep full records of his trips, so he did not get credit for his achievements for many years.