In 1818, Boonslick, Missouri resident Lindsay Carson was killed by a falling tree. His widow, Rebecca Robinson, raised 15 children by herself. Their 11th child, a kid named Kit, was sent to work in a saddle shop in Franklin, Missouri, where he heard tales from the Santa Fe Trail, which began at the shop’s front door. By the time Kit Carson was 16, he had left to work on the trail. Mountain men told wild stories to young Carson along the Rio Grande River. Some stories took hold. Kit became a mountain man, sometimes wild, sometimes ugly. This bronze depiction of mountain men in a buffalo skin canoe crashes the rapids on a Santa Fe street corner.