T is for Tetons

Tim Iverson
Naturalist

(1/2021) Sweeping across the wide open plains of Jackson Hole, Wyoming valley the sky seems limitless and expansive. Grasses and sage brush envelope the foreground, where herds of elk and bison graze, only to be bisected by the Snake River that serpentines its way across the western plateau. Just behind the pastoral grassland scenes, encumbered only by the occasional grove of trees, suddenly rises the mountain range that dominates the skyline and landscape. Immediately, and without any gradual warning or ascent, the Tetons soar 13,770 feet interrupting the endless expanse of sky. Grand Teton National Park has one of the most iconically American landscapes and some of the very best scenery the west has to offer.

Due south of Yellowstone National Park lies neighboring Grand Teton National Park in the northwestern corner of Wyoming. The Teton mountain range is just 40 miles long, but the park covers a total of 480 square miles, encompassing more than just the mountains which bear its moniker. Part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Grand Teton National Park along with adjacent Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding national forests, protect 18 million acres making it one of the largest intact ecosystems in the world. Largely untouched, the pristine environment found in Grand Teton National Park is the same prehistoric ecosystem that has thrived here for millenia featuring some of the same plants, animals, and ecological processes that have naturally occurred over many thousands of years.

Grand Teton National Park gets its name from its tallest peak, Grand Teton. It’s derived from the name bestowed by French-speaking fur trappers in the early 1820’s - Les Trois Tetons, meaning ‘The Three Teats.’ However, the area had long since been settled and named. The Shoshone and other ancient indigenous peoples, who had already named the range Teewinot ("Many Pinnacles"), had been in the area for at least 11,000 years.

Archaeological evidence suggests the earliest people followed elk, moose, bison, and bighorn sheep through the valley and mountains as the seasons changed. Research biologists and archaeologists confirm that their seasonal migratory patterns have not changed much over the last several thousand years. Encampments featuring hunting and fishing tools, as well as other cultural timestamps provide snapshots into these early human histories. Several structures, associated with religious or ceremonial purposes, have also been found on many of the peaks - indicating the mountains were previously summited.

By the early 19th century, fur-trapping was big business. Corporations had funded large scale trapping operations and tentacled across the largely unmapped north american continent. When the fur trappers arrived in what is now known as the Jackson Hole valley and the Teton mountains, they found the area devoid of any European settlement. Trappers freely operated and ultimately overhunted the native beaver populations. The trapping industry folded by the 1860’s and western expansion avoided this area until homestead ranching took root in the early 1900's.

As settlement and development was underway in the early 20th century, neighboring Yellowstone National Park superintendent Horace Albright grew concerned. Ranching was occupying greater and greater portions of land use, while dams were rerouting and disrupting water flows for agricultural development. The residents of Jackson Hole were wary of expanding Yellowstone, but were agreeable to a new and separate park believing they would have more oversight. Congress drafted the legislation and President Calvin Coolidge signed Grand Teton National Park into creation on February 26, 1929 - initially setting aside only the Teton Range and the six lakes at the base of the mountains.

The establishment of the park was certainly an accomplishment and a step in the right direction for conservation and protection of the resource, but the valley was still threatened from over development. Both Congress and the local citizenry were staunchly opposed to growing the park beyond the original borders, but Superintendent Albright remained vigilant to protecting the area.

While visiting Yellowstone National Park, wealthy financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. met with Albright. During the tour, they travelled to the edge of the park boundary and looked out over the Jackson Hole Valley toward the Teton Range. Gazing at the serrated peaks rising out from the land mass below, Albright expressed his concerns to the wealthy philanthropist. In turn, Rockefeller created a shell company, Snake River Land Company and started anonymously buying up land. His secret intention to turn the land over to the National Park Service was met with public backlash and resistance making it difficult for him and the agency to complete the transaction.

By 1942, he was growing impatient and applied pressure on Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to accept the donation. The Secretary convinced President Roosevelt to use the Antiquities Act to accept the land and create a national monument with his executive power. In 1943, 221,000 acres were donated, accepted, and became Jackson Hole National Monument buttressing the Tetons and extending conservation protection to the valley. As public sentiment changed in 1950 the land was eventually absorbed into Grand Teton National Park finally realizing the conservation dream from decades before.

Grand Teton National Park is as diverse as it is dramatic. As the elevation rises from 6,230 feet on the sagebrush valley floor to the towering 13,770 foot summit you pass through distinct areas with characteristics all their own. The park can largely be divided into sagebrush plains, dense forests of both coniferous and deciduous trees, wetlands and riparian river corridors, and alpine tundra areas. Colorful wildflowers paint mountain meadows throughout summer around motionless mountain lakes that reflect perfectly mirrored versions of their real world counterparts.

Throughout the fall, elk bellow their ethereal mating calls, while moose lazily follow warmer temperatures to lower elevations. As Yellow-bellied Marmots scamper across boulders, they can be heard issuing high pitched warning whistles as eagles soar overhead. The wildlife and plants are as interconnected to each other in this place as they are throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They are each as dependent on their success within this park as they are to the wider world. To see the Grand Tetons is to intrinsically know the power that the natural world can hold and why early park and conservation leaders worked so hard to preserve this place.To protect this piece of a larger untouched pristine wilderness was the only option for conservationists, eventually turning it over to an agency that is constitutionally mandated to preserve the natural, cultural, and historic resources leaving them unimpaired for this and future generations.

The "Grandmother of Conservation," Margaret Murie, spent much of her life in Jackson Hole and the Tetons. She is a naturalist and author, who stands on the same pedestal as John Muir and other famed conservation advocates. On the Tetons, she wrote:

"At last, the wide sky, the wide land, broke and bare but stretching far to the limitless blue sky of Wyoming. Room to breathe, to stretch one’s soul’s wings again. Here the big country still is. Always a joy to come back, to find it still big, still stretching away, meeting and passing starling buttes which rise here and there, and dry watercourses, drift fences, once in a while a ranch house and corrals nestling under cottonwoods and willows in one of those watercourses; once in a while a few cattle, a band of antelope in the sage, some horses galloping with the wind. After the cities, a wave of thankfulness rises in my heart that the great United States still has some room, some great spaces."