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Richard Leigh Beaver Dick about 1885. Leigh may be the most famous mountain man to have lived in Idaho. Leigh claims to have run away from home in England when only sixteen years old.

He arrived in Idaho sometime in the 1840s and eventually settled somewhat in the Forks Country (Upper Snake River Valley near present-day Rexburg) about 1860.

It’s believed that Brigham Young first called Leigh Beaver Dick not from the fact that Leigh was an expert beaver trapper, but on account of the resemblance of his two abnormally large front teeth to those of a beaver. The Bannock and Shoshone also saw the resemblance and called Leigh the Beaver.

Leigh married a 16-year-old Eastern Shoshone girl from Chief Washakie’s band in 1863. The ceremony was performed by a minister, but with no existing records, the bride’s Shoshone name is not known.

Dick gave her the English name of Jenny. He built a cabin near the confluence of the South Teton and Henry’s Fork rivers and began raising a family by hunting, trapping, fishing, and guiding often travelling east to Teton Basin.

It was Leigh who gave name to the Teton River that had been named Pierre’s River by French trappers. He also named Bitch Creek, called the North Fork of the Teton by polite society. Leigh gave names to many things in the Upper Valley.

Leigh guided the second Hayden Expedition of 1872 to the Teton Basin, to the Teton Range, and to Jackson Hole. Hayden and his men were so impressed with the abilities and hospitality of Richard and Jenny that they named the lakes at the base of the Tetons for them: Leigh Lake, Jenny Lake, and Beaver Dick Lake now known as String Lake. PLEASE HELP US TO REACH OUT BY SHARING OUR STORIES

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