I was charmed by the small town of Pinedale. Situated about an hour from Jackson Hole, it’s a place of hardy individuals — cowboys, ranchers, and outdoor-men. The town honors those rugged individuals who preceded them with this statue of a Mountain Man, situated outside the visitor center. It’s called “Working the Line”.
Mountain men were the first white pioneers in the area, exploring the mountains and living in the cold and isolated ranges. They made a living trapping and trading furs. It was a hard and lonely life but appealed to some. The mountain men’s time period was in the mid to late 19th century, before the rail opened the west and the isolation of the mountains was forever lost.
Pinedale has a museum dedicated to these hard individuals, the Museum of the Mountain Man. It provides an interesting look at the lives of these tough individuals.
