Jedediah Smith - Honors and Namesakes

Honors and Namesakes

Jedediah Smith's explorations were the main basis for accurate Pacific-West maps; all the travels and discoveries of the trappers and fur traders since Ashley went into the map of the western United States he prepared in the winter of 1830–31. This map has been called “a landmark in mapping of the American West”. In a eulogy for Smith printed in the Illinois Magazine for June 1832 the unknown author claimed “This map is now probably the best extant, of the Rocky Mountains, and the country on both sides, from the States to the Pacific.” The original map is lost, its content was superimposed probably by George Gibbs on a base map by John C. Frémont, which is on file at the American Geographical Society Library, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His expeditions also raised doubts about the legendary Buenaventura River from maps.

Smith's exploration of northwestern California is commemorated in the names of the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and the Smith River.

Most of the western slope of Wyoming's famous Teton Range is named the Jedediah Smith Wilderness after him. And the Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail, renamed the American River Bike Trail, runs between Folsom and Sacramento, California, through the former gold-dredging fields that are now the American River Parkway.

In the Frontiersman Camping Fellowship of Royal Rangers, New Mexico is designated the Jedediah Smith Chapter.

A street in Temecula, California is named for him.

A road in Colorado Springs, Colorado is named for him.

An inscription on the Madonna of the Trail monument in Upland, California commemorates Smith's crossing of the San Bernardino Mountains in 1826. The monument is located on Route 66 on the path that Smith followed from Etiwanda to the San Gabriel Mission.

A Liberty Ship, built in 1943 and used during World War II, was scrapped in 1964.