James Felix "Jim" Bridger (March 17, 1804 – July 17, 1881) was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites. He was of English ancestry, and his family had been in North America since the early colonial period.

Jim Bridger had a strong constitution that allowed him to survive the extreme conditions he encountered walking the Rocky Mountains from what would become southern Colorado to the Canadian border. He had conversational knowledge of French, Spanish and several native languages. He would come to know many of the major figures of the early west, including Brigham Young, Kit Carson, George Armstrong Custer, John Fremont, Joseph Meek, and John Sutter.

Bridger was born in Richmond, Virginia. He began his colorful career in 1822 at the age of 18, as a member of General William Ashley's Upper Missouri Expedition and had a significant role in the ordeal of Hugh Glass. He was among the first white men to see the geysers and other natural wonders of the Yellowstone region. In the winter of 1824-1825, Bridger gained fame as the first European American to see the Great Salt Lake (though some now dispute that status in favor of Étienne Provost), which he reached traveling in a bull boat. Due to its salinity, he believed it to be an arm of the Pacific Ocean.

John Gale "Johnny" Horton (April 30, 1925–November 5, 1960) was an American country music and rockabilly singer most famous for his semi-folk, so-called "saga songs" which began the "historical ballad" craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s. With them, he had several major successes, most notably during 1959 with the song "The Battle of New Orleans" (written by Jimmy Driftwood) which was awarded the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording. The song was awarded the Grammy Hall of Fame Award, and during 2001 ranked No. 333 of the Recording Industry Association of America's "Songs of the Century".

During 1960, Horton had two other successes with "North to Alaska" for John Wayne's movie, North to Alaska, and "Sink the Bismarck." Horton is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

Horton was born in Los Angeles, California, to John and Claudia Horton, the youngest of five siblings, and raised in Rusk, Texas. His family often traveled to California, frequently as migrant fruit pickers. After graduation from Gallatin High School in 1944, he attended the Methodist-affiliated Lon Morris Junior College in Jacksonville, Texas, with a basketball scholarship. He later attended Seattle University and briefly attended Baylor University, although he did not graduate from any of these institutions.

Jiří Grossmann (20 July 1941 – 5 December 1971) was a Czechoslovak theatre actor, poet, and composer.

Grossmann was born in Prague. After his graduation, he started at the technical university ČVUT, but left in 1962 when he met Miloslav Šimek in the Olympik bar. Grossmann performed with Dixie Party Band in the Olympik bar, playing on contrabass also. They immediately established a theatre double and started writing poems, short-stories and stageplays. Their first theatre group was called Mlok. Grossmann and Šimek's most famous project was Navštěvní dny, a theatre-styled show performed in theatre Semafor.

The duo was persecuted after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 following the Prague Spring.

When Grossmann realized he was dying of Hodgkin's lymphoma, he wrote one of his most sad lyrics called "Závidím (I Am Envious)" expressing fears of death. A few days before Christmas in 1971, Grossmann died in the hospital.

The Jiří Grossmann Theatre and Prague's Jiří Grossmann's Archway commemorate him today.

Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was a hunter, trapper, fur trader, trailblazer, author, cartographer and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the American West Coast and the Southwest during the 19th century. Nearly forgotten by historians almost a century after his death, Smith has been rediscovered as an American hero who was the first white man to travel overland from the Salt Lake frontier, the Colorado River, the Mojave Desert, and finally into California. Smith was the first United States citizen to explore and eastwardly cross the Sierra Nevada and the treacherous Great Basin. Smith also was the first American to travel up the California coast to reach the Oregon Country. Not only was he the first to do this, but he and Robert Stuart discovered the South Pass. This path became the main route used by pioneers to travel to the Oregon Country. Surviving three massacres and one bear mauling, Jedediah Smith's explorations and documented discoveries were highly significant in opening the American West to expansion by white settlers and cattlemen. Smith bought two African American slaves in St. Louis to tend his house and held contemporary views that American Indians were inferior to whites.

Benjamin E. Murphy (born March 6, 1942) is an American actor. He is known for his role in the ABC television series Alias Smith and Jones, co-starring as Kid Curry, first with Pete Duel and later with Roger Davis.

Though born in Arkansas, Murphy grew up in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. An alumnus of Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois,^{[citation needed]} he attended eight different colleges before deciding to pursue an acting career.

Murphy appeared in a supporting role in The Name of the Game, a series featuring a rotating leading cast including Tony Franciosa, Gene Barry, and Robert Stack. From 1971 to 1973, he starred in Alias Smith and Jones with Pete Duel (1971–1972) and Roger Davis (1972–1973). After Alias Smith and Jones, Murphy joined Lorne Greene in the 1973 ABC crime drama Griff. He played detective S. Michael "Mike" Murdock, assistant to Greene's character, Wade "Griff" Griffin, a Los Angeles retired police officer turned private eye. The series had some notable guest stars but folded after thirteen weeks.