A chance meeting on a steamboat in 1842 with explorer John C. Fremont, an officer in the United States Topographical Engineer Corps, led the unassuming mountain man to fame. Fremont hired Carson to help guide his explorations of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and California. Fremont’s official reports, ghost-written by his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont, lionized the frontier scout. Dime novelists embellished Carson’s larger-than-life image, transforming him into a popular western hero.

Carson played a less heroic role as the leader of the forced relocation of Navajo Indian people during the Civil War. He oversaw efforts to drive more than 8,000 Navajo people from their homelands over 300 miles to a reservation on the New Mexico plains—an ordeal remembered by the Navajos as the “Long Walk.” After the Civil War, Carson moved to Colorado, where he helped negotiate a peace treaty between the Ute Indians and the United States government.

After a long and eventful career, Carson’s health began to decline and his wife’s death from childbirth complications left him heartbroken. The legend of the American West died one month later from an abnormal aortic aneurysm.

Kit Carson remains an image of one of the original American frontiersmen, and History Colorado houses some of his artifacts. His coat is on display at the Trinidad History Museum.