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Exactly two hundred years ago, in 1799, Jedediah Strong Smith was born in Jericho, New York. It is his statue that kneels on the southeast corner of the Civic Center property in San Dimas (Bonita and Walnut). He was the first explorer to come into this valley overland from the American frontier. The bronze statue was created by Victor Issa and placed there in 1992 by the Festival of Western Arts. This was the first piece of public art for San Dimas. Jedediah was one of seven sons, born when it was the duty of a woman to work hard, fear God, and bear her husband many sons. When he was twenty-three, “Diah” went into the fur trapping business in the West under General Ashley. He was successful and well-liked by his companions. Always clean-shaven, honest and direct, with intelligence and courage, he was knowledgeable in the skills of survival in that early and primitive country. Jedediah was a quiet young man, one who never smoked or chewed tobacco, never swore, and drank wine or brandy sparingly. He took with him into the wilderness, only his rifle, his Bible, and very little else except the clothes on his back. In 1826, he and his men started toward the Southwest in hopes of finding beaver. Not finding any, they kept on in that direction, until they were forced to cross the Mohave Desert. They went through the canyon below St. George, Utah, and called that part of the country, the “land of starvation.” They crossed the Colorado River in October of 1826, and in fifteen days came to the San Bernardino Mountains - a “country of complete barrens.” They came down into our valley through the Cajon Pass and continued on to the San Gabriel Mission, stopping on the way at Mud Springs (San Dimas). |
When they got to the Mission, they wrote the Spanish Governor at San Diego for permission to go north to San Francisco. The Governor did not believe that they were a harmless hunting party, and on the assumption that they were a military expedition, refused them permission to go anywhere except back the way they had come. On December 20th Jedediah Smith and his party left the Mission San Gabriel and went back toward San Bernardino.
Jedediah Smith and his partners were most successful- he was able to buy a house for himself in St. Louis where he made a home for two of his brothers. On his last trip he and two partners divided $53,920.92, a handsome sum for those days. In May of 1831, Jedediah started on a trading trip to Mexico, going by way of Santa Fe. His group had trouble finding water, and he went off alone to search. He was ambushed by a party of Indians, and died May 27 , 1831, at the age of 32. In his short life, though, he made many discoveries — he was the first to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains, the first to travel the length and width of the Great Basin, the first to reach Oregon by a journey up the California coast. He discovered the “South Pass” in the Rocky Mountains. Jedediah Smith was familiar with our country from the Missouri River to the Pacific, and from Mexico to Canada. He was probably the most important explorer after Lewis and Clark. In memorializing him with our statue, we have honored his reported entry into our Valley, when he exclaimed that it was “A Welcome Sight.” |
