Jedediah Strong Smith's Route - 1823

The bronze places Jedediah Smith's 1823 grizzly mauling near this spot, by the old bison trail through Buffalo Gap. Historians are less certain: some put it near Wind Cave, others in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. James Clyman, who sewed Smith's torn ear back on with a needle, left the account, and Smith wore his hair long over the scars afterward. The bronze's first white man passed through country the Lakota held. It closes on a 1960 quotation from the naturalist Donald Culross Peattie.

What the plaque says

Jedediah Strong Smith's Route -- 1823 First white man in the Black Hills, this courageous and brawny beaver trapper in 1823 led a dozen Mountain Men from Fort Kiowa to the Yellowstone. His party entered the Black Hills via the old bison trail through Buffalo Gap near here. Born in New York State in 1799, Jed Smith came West from Ohio in 1822 to join the Ashley expedition from St. Louis up the Missouri River. Later, he found the South Pass and was the first white man to reach California by the overland route. He is also credited with extensive exploration of the West Coast north to Canada. This skillful hunter, successful fur trader, and pioneer explorer of the American West was a man who feared God and loved peace. His Bible was his constant companion. Jed Smith was a trail blazer whose three driving ambitions were to serve God, to provide for his family, and to explore the unmapped American West. He was successful in attaining all three goals. During the course of his Western explorations, Jed Smith survived many perilous experiences, including an encounter with a grizzly bear near this spot. In 1831 near the Cimarron River, he was killed by a Comanche lance. His body was never found. *Quotation by Donald Culross Peattie, copyright 1960 Erected 1976 by the Jedediah Smith Corral - Westerners' International, Hot Springs, the South Dakota Department of Transportation and the S.D. State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wind Cave National Park — 8.2 mi
  A cave that breathes through a hole the size of a dinner plate, lined with nearly all the boxwork known on Earth, under a prairie restocked with bison shipped from New York.
• The Mammoth Site — 10.0 mi
  A housing lot in Hot Springs where a bulldozer turned up a tusk in 1974 and the developer gave up the subdivision for sixty-one mammoths.
• State Game Lodge — 18 mi
  The lodge where Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1927, fishing for trout, dedicating Mount Rushmore, and deciding not to run again.
• Needles Highway — 18 mi
  Fourteen miles that Governor Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback through the granite spires, threading a tunnel eight feet wide.

More markers nearby

• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Wind Cave — 7.5 mi
• Leslie Jensen Scenic Drive — 8.9 mi
• Battle Mountain — 9.0 mi
• Hot Springs SD — 9.3 mi