Old Bill Williams was another character of the early days of the Santa Fe Trail, and was called so when Carson, Uncle Dick Wooten, and Maxwell were comparatively young in the mountains. He was, at the time of their advent in the remote West, one of the best known men there, and had been famous for years as a hunter and trapper. Williams was better acquainted with every pass in the Rockies than any other man of his time, and only surpassed by Jim Bridger later. By Alfred Jacob Miller, 1839