Exciting True Story Of Wyoming’s 1st Settler

“120 years ago, on May 15, 1898, mountain man Jim Baker died in the two-story cabin he built of hand-hewn logs in Wyoming’s Little Snake River Valley near the Colorado border.”

- WyoHistory.org

The refurbished cabin is now at the Little Snake River Museum, Savery, WY.

Jim Baker came west from Illinois in 1818 for a life of danger, adventure, and romance. He was the first settler in the Colorado Territory which led to both Wyoming and Colorado claiming him as their own.

In 1838, Baker hooked up with the fur trade and learned from famed frontiersmen Jim Bridger and Kit Carson in the Uinta Mountains of current day Utah and Wyoming. He had many battles with natives but also many friends and married a Shoshone woman near what is now Medicine Bow, Wyoming.

He was a Chief Scout at Fort Laramie, a guide, a trapper, a ferry operator on the Green River Overland Trail crossing, A Denver resident for a short time, and a valuable savior to many people in desperate situations with natives and weather.

Lori Van Pelt tells more of this great story at WyoHistory.Org.