Pop Quiz: 1. When was Teton National Park Created?
2. How many acres is Teton National Park?
3. What famous family donated land to the Federal Government to help expand the Park?
Don’t worry, answers are mixed into the story below…read on and enjoy!!
Hey Gang…hope all is well. After our time yesterday at the “doc in the box”; and by the way, they were awesome, we spent some time walking around Downtown Jackson or Jackson Hole if you will..
Very cool downtown area. You can tell there is money here and like I said in our previous post, there is the new and old co-existing in The Jackson Hole Area.
After our time in Jackson, we came back into the Park and spent some time sightseeing. Both days, yesterday and today proved to be super cool (and today was definitely super cool…LOL). We discovered so much history, wildlife and how changeable the weather can be this time of the year.
As we came back into the park we stopped by the Maud Noble Cabin. Miss Noble was instrumental in the creation of Teton National Park. At her cabin in July of 1923 she met with citizens of Jackson Hole, The Superintendent of Yellowstone Park and many of the prominent local government officials to start conversations about setting aside land for a park. Six years later in 1929 Congress created Tetons National Park.
With the establishment of the original park, The Rockefeller Family donated approximately 33,000 acres to complete the park. All of the land was combined in 1950 into the Park we know today.
Side Note: Click on the link below to learn more of the detailed history of the land purchases that lead up to the complete park. Very interesting to read, not sure it was all on the up and up ???
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/establishment-grand-teton-national-park
On the same parcel as Maud’s cabin was Bill Menor’s Reaction Ferry used to cross the Snake River in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Mr. Menor homesteaded the land and also ran a general store along with the ferry service. Check out the video below.
Next we were onto Mormon Row Historic District which includes the iconic “barn and mountain picture” that you have to take while here. Read below to learn more about this cool history.
“Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, sent parties from the Salt Lake Valley to establish new communities and support their expanding population. Mormon homesteaders, who settled east of Blacktail Butte near the turn of the 19-century, clustered their farms to share labor and community, a stark contrast with the isolation typical of many western homesteads. These settlers first arrived in the 1890s from Idaho establishing a community (named Grovont by the U.S. Post Office) known today as “Mormon Row.”
Homesteaders established 27 homesteads in the Grovont area because of relatively fertile soil, shelter from winds by Blacktail Butte and access to the Gros Ventre River. Despite the harsh conditions of Jackson Hole, Mormon settlers grew crops by using irrigation. These hardy settlers dug ditches by hand and with teams of horses, building an intricate network of levees and dikes to funnel water from central ditches to their fields between 1896 and 1937. Water still flows in some of these ditches”.
Today 5/19, was spent chasing the weather and wildlife. Yesterday, at the Mormon Row we were in shorts and t-shirts, today we are bundled up because it is snowing across much of the Park and colder weather is expected as we head north into Yellowstone. But, the weather was nothing compared to the cool adventure we had watching a bear with the Park Rangers and many of our tourist friends.
As I was walking to the lake this morning to check out the snow fall I came within 30 ft of a black bear. Both of us startled by the encounter. I wasn’t quick enough to capture him on video and he…or she wanted nothing to do with me anyway and scurried off into the woods. I reported the close encounter to the Rangers as they always want that information so they can keep an eye out when bears get close to visitors. They recognized the bear by my description. In the afternoon we were blessed with a second encounter and were able to capture a female bear in the wild. Check out the video below.
Tonight it is time to huddle in the Mirada away from the chilly conditions…Brrrr
Oh yes; sorry, almost forgot…The Park is 45 miles in length from north to south, 26 miles maximum width. Park boundaries include approximately 310,000 acres, 485 square miles.
