Michel Bourdon

Bourdon was already in the mountains when he joined Thompson, and he left his name in Utah before this valley. He was in the Bitterroot Valley by 1807 with a trader's party, crossed the divide with Salish buffalo hunters and Finan McDonald in 1810, and went down to the mouth of the Columbia with Thompson's boat party in 1811. With Donald Mackenzie's brigade in 1818 he followed the Bear River into Cache Valley, where Blacksmith's Fork was long called Bourdon's River. He took over the Snake brigade in 1822 and was killed by Blackfeet the next year.

What the plaque says

Michel Bourdon This valley was discovered in 1822 by an expedition of Hudson's Bay Company trappers led by Michel Bourdon. Bourdon had come to the Northwest with David Thompson, who had started the Idaho fur trade in 1808-9. Trappers searched everywhere for beaver, and were active south of here four years before Bourdon took them farther into this mountain wilderness. Fur hunting went on for another decade in these parts before the country was about trapped out and abandoned by the fur traders. 303 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Borah Peak Earthquake Fault Scarp — 28 mi
  In 1983 the valley floor dropped seven feet in a second, and a truckload of hunters dropped with it.

More markers nearby

• Bison Jump — 1.1 mi
• Clayton Smelter — 18 mi
• Mount Borah — 29 mi
• Earthquakes — 29 mi