Jedediah Strong Smith was a very early “mountain man” and fur trapper. A very interesting man, one who blazed many trails into California. He is considered the first non-Native-American to travel overland from the Mississippi and across the Sierra Nevada into California. He was a young scrap of 22 when he made this first foray. When he was 27 he led a party from southern Utah, across Nevada, Arizona, the Mojave Desert and the Cajon Pass to Mission San Gabriel in southern California.

In 1831, Jedediah Smith was at the Cimarron River near Santa Fe, New Mexico looking for a water source to serve his latest trading party, and was ambushed by Indians. When he failed to return from the scouting trip, his group went on to Santa Fe without him, hoping that he might have gone on ahead. Eventually his companions on the trip, finding some of his personal possessions for sale by a Santa Fe merchant, learned that he had been killed by a group of Comanches along the Cimarron River.