Features

Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West – Jerry Enzler’s Award Winning Masterpiece

by Connie Cherba

Looking for some page-turning reading on the history of the West and development of America? Look no further than Jerry Enzler’s award-winning Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West, a thoroughly researched and entertaining biography of one of the nation’s most revered mountain men.

Jerry served as the founding director of Dubuque’s National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium for 37 years before he retired in 2016. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Bridger biography was a retirement project. Jerry has been captivated by the story and working on the biography for more than four decades.

He reminisces that viewing the film Jeremiah Johnson as a young man marked the beginning of his enthusiasm for Bridger. A follow-up trip to the library failed to turn up a book on Jeremiah Johnson. Instead Jerry found two outdated and incomplete biographies on Jim Bridger and vowed to “research this fascinating character and write his story.”

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