Fort Bridger became the second great stopping place on the Oregon Trail and the first after leaving Fort Laramie. As Bridger wrote to Chouteau on December 10, 1843:
"I have established a small fort with a blacksmith shop and a supply of iron, on the road of the emigrants on Black's fork of Green River, which promises fairly. They, in coming out, are generally well supplies with money, but by the time they get there are in want of all kinds of supplies. Horses, provisions, smithwork, etc., bring ready cash from them, and should I receive the goods hereby ordered will do a considerable business in that way with them."
During its hay-day, Fort Bridger was described as being located in a beautiful valley of a "strong mountain stream whose pure waters, fresh from the melting snows of the Uintah mountains, and alive with wholesome mountain trout, flowed through the post in several branches, each lined with a fringe of trees kept alive by the perennial moisture of the soil. It was veritable an oasis in the desert, and its selection does great credit to the good judgment of its founders."
Bridger continued to do business at his fort until 1853 when Brigham Young and his Mormons forced Bridger out with the threat of arrest in the Mormons' efforts to rid the entire vast area of non-Mormons. The Mormons soon afterwards came to believe that American troops that were advancing towards Utah were coming to conquer them. They decided that the United States would not benefit by the Mormon's labors and abandoned and destroyed the fort.
The following spring, the Army rebuilt the fort and stayed there to guard the stage routes and to serve as a base of operations for the southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah.
Not long after, the United States was involved in her war between the Union and Confederacy and Fort Bridger's military numbers were drastically reduced to include a sergeant's guard, augmented by a volunteer company of mountain men mustered in by Judge W. A. Carter, the post sutler. As events of the Civil War extended to the west, Nevada and California volunteers, as well as Confederate captures referred to as "Galvanized Yankees" garrisoned the fort. (The Galvanized Yankees were Confederate soldiers captured by the Yankees and given the choice of serving the Union in the west or, hopefully, surviving the rest of the war while interned in a Yankee Prison camp.) At the end of the war, when regular troops once again took over the fort, it was found to be in a near ruined condition but soon it was put to serviceable order again.
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