Jim Bridger, Mountain Man

Fort Bridger, Wyoming

To be frank, neither of the three full-body statues of frontiersman Jim Bridger (one in Missouri, one in Montana, and one here) resembles his known photos, but this one is particularly heroic. Bridger looks like he just stepped out of makeup and wardrobe on a Hollywood set, not like the grizzled, battered mountain man who lived most of his life in the wild and who once walked around for three years with an Indian arrow stuck in his back.

The eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Bridger, by Wyoming artist David Alan Clark, was unveiled in 2008 at the entrance to a fort that Bridger had built as a kind of money-making general store for pioneers along the Oregon Trail (They had cash and valuables, he had supplies). Bridger was eventually kicked out of his own fort by the Mormons, who claimed he was selling guns and ammo to the local Indians.

Bridger was infamous for abandoning fellow mountain man Hugh Glass after Glass had been mauled by a bear, but Bridger himself somehow survived the perils of his profession and lived to be 77, dying in bed on his Missouri farm in 1881.