History of Grand Teton National Park (Part 1)

Grand Teton National Park is one of those places that stays with you long after you’ve visited. The peaks are stunning, the wildlife is abundant, and the lakes and rivers tie it all together. Still, as iconic as the Tetons are, the story behind the park is a lot more complicated—and a lot more interesting—than most people realize.

Before it became a national park, this landscape was shaped by Indigenous communities, early fur traders, ranchers, homesteaders, prospectors, conservationists, and some pretty heated debates about land, tourism, and the future of the valley itself.

Thanks for tuning in to Part 1 of our History of Grand Teton National Park series.

Joining us today is Katherine Wonson, a historian specializing in the history of Teton Valley, Wyoming. She first dipped her toe into the history of the region as the director of the National Park Service’s Western Center for Historic Preservation and the cultural resources branch lead for Grand Teton National Park. Now, Katherine works as the founder and principal of Old School Heritage Solutions in Jackson where she supports restoration and preservation projects to keep history alive. 

On this episode we’ll focus on the land and people before it was a national park, including Indigenous connections, John Colter, homesteaders, and more.

Alright, let’s learn all about the rocky history of Grand Teton National Park!

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the land of 49+ Indigenous Tribes who maintain current and ancestral connections to the lands, waters, wildlife, plants, and more.

Voices of Greater Yellowstone was created by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a conservation nonprofit dedicated to working with people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, now and for future generations.

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Podcast Artwork > Rachel Dunlap Art

Music > Redwood Trail by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

Thumbnail Photo > USGS

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

He um kind of patched together the valley floor mostly and was ready to donate it to the National Park Service, or to the government, U.S. government, to become part of Grand Teton National Park. And you want to read, you know, crazy debates and congressional tomfoolery and you know slander campaigns and all sorts of things. That is the story of the creation of the monument in 1943. And then eventually the monument was turned into the expansion and just kind of joined with the initial 1929 section in 1950.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Grand Teton National Park is one of those places that stays with you long after you visited. The peaks are stunning, the wildlife is abundant, and the lakes and rivers tie it all together. Still, as iconic as the Tetons are, the story behind the park is a lot more complicated and a lot more interesting than most people realize. Before it became a national park, this landscape was shaped by indigenous communities, early fur traders, ranchers, homesteaders, prospectors, conservationists, and they held some pretty heated debates about land, tourism, and the future of the valley itself. Welcome back to the Voices of Greater Yellowstone Podcast, where we share the stories and science of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. I'm your host, Emmy Reid. We're diving into the varied history of Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area on another history two-parter. Joining us today is Catherine Wanson, a historian who focuses on the history of Teton Valley, Wyoming. She first dipped her toe into the history of the region as the director of the National Park Service's Western Center for Historic Preservation, and the Cultural Resources Branch Lead for Grand Teton National Park. Now, Catherine works as the founder and principal of Old School Heritage Solutions in Jackson, where she supports restoration and preservation projects to keep history alive. On this episode, we'll focus on the land and people before it was a national park, including Indigenous Connections, John Coulter, homesteaders, and more. Alright, let's learn all about the rocky history of Grand Teton National Park. Catherine, welcome to the podcast. To start us off, could you tell me your favorite spot in Grand Teton National Park?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

My favorite spot in Grand Teton National Park has to be the Barbecue Dude Ranch, which is down on the Snake River. And not only do you get views of a beautiful Dude Ranch and the Snake, but then the Tetons just kind of jutting out from the landscape as you look to the west.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Oh, beautiful. I can imagine there's some pretty spectacular scenery out there. What else drew you to the history of this place?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Well, I had a funny beginning to my life as a historian in Grand Teton National Park, which was that I worked for the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort as a snowshoe guide in the park. And I had some clients from Chicago, one of my very first tours out, and we came upon these cabins, and they said, Now what are these? And they were so excited and they wanted to know more. And I felt like a total disappointment because as a history buff and someone who loved history, an art history major, I had no idea what to tell them. And I said, I think they're homestead cabins. And I barely knew even what that meant, let alone who had lived there and the backstory behind it. Uh, so I would say there was just um an early exposure after moving here when I was 23 years old to the physical fabric of the history and just being curious. That was kind of my doorway into the history side.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Great. And what roles have you had in history adjacent to the park?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah. So I started as an intern for the Western Center for Historic Preservation, uh, probably at 26 or 27 years old. Uh, and then I was hired as the cultural resources specialist for Grand Teton National Park, and that is code for overseeing uh the history uh program, and eventually I uh became the resource manager, the cultural resource chief, I think, uh, branch manager, that's right. And I oversaw the archaeology program, museum, history, historic preservation, etc. Uh, and then after that, I uh took on the job as the director of the Western Center for Historic Preservation. So, and that is located in Grand Teton National Park, uh, where we trained people in historic preservation skills. We rehabilitated an old dude ranch so people could stay there and learn historic preservation. And then I oversaw all of the preservation training programs for the National Park Service, still from Grand Teton National Park, but I was reporting to Washington at the time working for the historic preservation training center. And now, after two years, uh I broke out on my own and I'm a consultant and uh I teach historic preservation as an educator.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Perfect. I can't wait for you to drop all your history knowledge on us over this episode. Um, this landscape has been inhabited and visited by indigenous peoples for thousands upon thousands of years. What's the earliest data we have on people traveling through the area that we now identify as Grand Teton National Park? And what do you think drew people to this area?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, so you know, these things are always evolving as we discover and technology advances and our archaeological data improves. But as of now, we think about 11,000 years ago as the first human habitation we found evidence of. And I think what's important to mention is that long ago, like 50 years ago, there was this impression that, you know, um indigenous peoples only visited the valley, you know, if for short bursts of time, like hunting and kind of coming in and out. And we are now totally changed that um view of their use of land. It was really a homeland. They spent, you know, if not entire season, if not the entire year, at least many seasons uh in the valley. They were highly mobile groups, they were hunting through the valleys, the foothills, all the way up into the Tetons. Um, there is evidence uh up high in the Tetons of uh Native American use. We also know it was a highly spiritual place. So while we think of the mountains for recreation and mountaineering, um most likely those high elevations were not pursuits to see, you know, who could summit, who could bag a peak. Um they had high cultural and spiritual value. Sorry, to answer your question about what drew them to the area, it's it's the same things that draw us to the area now. It's um, you know, abundant water, which was obviously important for survival, plant resources uh for food, um, obviously wildlife as well for food. Um, and then we had mountain passes and kind of wouldn't say easy trade routes, but ways to connect uh through travel corridors. And then we also have an obsidian source. Everyone thinks of Yellowstone when they think of obsidian, but um in Wilson and along the Moose Wilson Road and other parts of the park, we have found obsidian sources.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Oh, fascinating. Yeah, because I always think of obsidian cliffs and and Yellowstone as the real iconic spot where a lot of that obsidian is sourced. But that's interesting to learn that there's also some a little more down south. What are some of the maybe current tribes um that we have in the United States today that have been visiting um this area for quite some time?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yes. So it's the Shoshone, specifically the Eastern Shoshone, uh, who hunted bighorn sheep. Uh the Bannock, the crow, the blackfeet, the Grovant, and the Nez Perce people are the primary. However, there are 25 affiliated tribes with Grand Teton National Park. So that list is probably the group that is most associated with the most time here. But we know from kind of the traveling nature of these tribes that um many, many, many more than that list uh spent time in the area.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Who were the first non-Indigenous people in the area and how did they end up there?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Early non-indigenous history is probably less clear than we'd like it to be. However, it's pretty much agreed upon that John Coulter, after leaving the Lewis Clark, Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806, so probably around 1807, 1808, um, he joined the fur traders heading west to the Rocky Mountains and came through what we believe uh was the Grand Teton National Park area. Um he was exploring trapping routes and trading opportunities, and he was definitely traveling between Yellowstone and areas further east. Uh, he gave such extraordinary depictions of this area, which you can imagine were probably quite fitting, but they nicknamed it Coulter's Hell, and they thought they were all like kind of tales and exaggerations. And it wasn't until later artists came along and painted uh and photographed even with um William Henry Jackson, the area, that it was kind of verified that this was not, you know, these majestic, jagged peaks and the wildlife therein and all the you know wild adventures he had, uh, you know, were not were not fantasies and were not made up, but you know, that's what that's what it would have been like here in the early 1800s.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Interesting. Did John Coulter spend um a good amount of time in this area or was he really more so passing through?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Um, probably more, maybe a little more than passing through, but um no, he was not like he did not inhabit the area, let me put it that way. He was certainly um traveling.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah. Who was he sharing these stories with of this incredible landscape and iconic megafauna?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Um he was definitely sharing them back east um with other interested explorers and uh those looking to develop a fur trade more. Uh, and I think those were the the doubters.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Can you tell me you touched on the fur trade? Um, what were they, what kind of furs were they trading in the area?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, so there were very uh fashionable beaver pelt hats at the time, and so there was a huge demand for them, and as you can imagine, and that was in Europe mostly. Uh, so as you can imagine, the Western U.S. made kind of the perfect um source, resource for that. We had abundant beaver populations in the Jackson Hole area, um, and you were able to travel between areas within Jackson because of the Snake River, so it also was ideal because these group, these hunting parties could move around. And then initially there was reduced competition among the trappers. Um and the mountain men, because it was so remote, there were other areas that had already been exploited. So we were kind of similar to the homesteading era, we were one of the later touched um areas. And there were primarily three companies, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, American Fur Company, and the Hudson's Bay Company, uh, that kind of came through the area. Uh, and that eventually led to the Rendez Mount, excuse me, the Rendez Mountain Rendezvous system, which was where they set up rendezvous at posts. And I believe the nearest post to us would have been what we call Pierre's Hole, which is now Teton Valley, Idaho. So still up and over the pass, but then it was a place where indigenous people, mountain men, um, fur traders would trade goods and um supplies and all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

And to place it about what is the time range of the of the fur trapping era in this area?

SPEAKER_01 11:41

That's kind of 1810, I think 1830s or 40s. Eventually the demand for the um beaver pelts dropped because silk hats came into fashion. And so people no longer wanted the beaver pelts. But also we had, you know, over harvested, um, and there were other reasons why the why the industry crashed as well. The companies lost money, uh, it was no longer an economic driver out here.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Got it. So maybe a little bit of good news for beavers, but bad news for silkworms, I guess. Yep. How did this area get its name? You know, now it's called Grand Teton National Park. Um, did it have a name before it was like known as Grand Teton National Park?

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, I I would love to dig a little further into that to know any other kind of place names prior to the Titans, um, because pretty early on, even in the fur trapping era, they were referred to as the Titans. The belief is that it's the French, Les Trois Titans, the three breasts. Um, however, even that is debated. It could have been based on um an indigenous name that was just kind of translated into French that has nothing to do with um the three breasts. Uh, we're I wouldn't say that's a fact that I feel is cemented in stone where the name came from, uh, but it certainly you know has been around a long time.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Got it a little up for debate there. Um, I guess similarly, how did Jackson Hole get its name?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yes. So it's David Edward Jackson, uh, who was associated with the Rocky, or is it probably a employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in the 1820s? Um, and so that is the Jackson of Jackson Hole. The hole part comes from the valley floor, uh geologically speaking, is I guess you'd say sinking, and they uh it's on a fault line at the base of the Tetons, which are rising, and so it's a hole. Uh, but and the other thing I always find interesting, if you look at the old newspaper articles, we were actually Jackson's hole, possessive. Uh, and I don't know exactly when that stopped. I want to say like 1950s, but um, so yeah, Pierre's hole is another one, and that was possessive, Pierre's hole, not Pierre Hole. So yeah, it's kind of a funny, if you think about it now, it should be possessive. It's Jackson's hole. Um, but we refer to it as Jackson Hole.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. You know, sometimes we just get a little lazy and and cut off a little bit of a name. Um, so again, we were talking about how the beaver trapping industry was really what brought this area up, and then we have a crash in the beaver hat demand over in Europe. So, what happened to the area then after that?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Uh well, there was much less use of the area. That said, indigenous populations were absolutely still in the area. Um, so you know, they were not rising and falling based on um beaver pelts. Um, their use of the area continued. Um, some trappers remained as either guider guides, excuse me, or traders. So even though the whole industry collapsed, it's not to say that, you know, you couldn't hunt or trap something here and then bring it to, you know, a rendezvous or something like that. So there was still use of the area, but definitely had gone uh way down. Um, the overland trails that connected everyone who was migrating west to settle those areas kind of bypassed Jackson. So that would have been what should have been or would have been happening and happened in a lot of other mountain towns at this same period, like the 1840s to 1890s. Um but because Jackson was so inhospitable to human life and difficult to access with the steep mountain passes and everything like that, we we were not really part, not really, we were not part of any of these um overland trails, like the Oregon Trail and the South Pass and everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Gotcha. Pretty, yeah. Still to this day, Jackson feels really hard to get to. Like, okay, am I going through the park? Am I going over the pass? Am I gonna go over the other pass? And, you know, pick your poison. Could you tell me about the Reynolds expedition in like 1860 and then also the Hayden Geological Survey and what that looked like in the Grand Teton area?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, so the Reynolds expedition was led by uh William Reynolds, he was an U.S. Army engineer, and the purpose was to map the northern Rockies, um, to assess the transportation routes, and to kind of just document generally like what our geography and natural resources that we had. The intention was, of course, to go to Yellowstone. Um, but because of the terrain and the winter conditions, they ended up spending a little bit more time in uh the greater region, including the Tetons. Uh, so that was a mapping expedition, I think, in 1860. In 1870, uh, you have the Hayden Geological Survey. And what's important about that uh is that William Henry Jackson, the photographer, which often people think Jackson was named, or that's the Jackson they know in association with Jackson, but that's not who it was named after. And then Thomas Moran, um I can't remember the painting movement he was part of, um, but certainly painting the American West and sublime landscapes and really um kind of a reverence for the natural beauty. Um and their images were really instrumental in persuading Congress uh to create Yellowstone National Park in 1872. So not only images of Yellowstone, but um also of the Tetons and just how you know amazing this landscape was and the need for for protection.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

So then the next group to make its way over those mountain passes and settle in the region were the prospectors and the homesteaders. And so, you know, what were the prospectors looking for? And you know, what was life like for these folks?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah. So the prospectors are kind of a footnote in in the history, and they're only a footnote because they didn't end up being terribly successful, which is kind of surprising when you look at these mountains and you would think, God, it's gotta, you know, them hills gotta be filled with with uh precious metals. Um, and that's not to say that um there weren't some um things mined. Um, and I'm trying there are things that I never remember, like bentonite, but it's not bentonite. Um more kind of uh less precious and more, you know, kind of everyday minerals and and metals. Uh so we have actually we're Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, if you've ever skied there, there is a run called Gold Miners, and there actually was a gold mine there, and there was a tramway that the um I can't remember their last name, but that they built to try to uh move the gold um that they were uh mining for down to the valley floor. Um and so I always like to joke that that was JMR's first tram. Um but there were other, you know, mines that were not terribly successful, but they found things. But yeah, this never blew up with mining wealth again, unlike our, I say again, meaning unlike so many other towns in the mountain west at this time, uh yeah, we were not part of the westward migration. Uh, we were not part of the mining uh explosion, you know, the economic explosion uh that happened in that era as well, because we really there was not a huge amount that was discovered. However, the uh homesteaders that came through, that is more than a footnote, I would say. That really became the genesis of modern Jackson as far as where the towns were developed. Um, they weren't towns initially. Um, Mormon Row is a great example of early um Mormon settlers coming from Utah, then settling in Idaho, and then eventually over to the Tetons. They came over in a huge party of multiple families. I think it was the winter of 1888, 89 was their first winter. Um, and they came over Teton Pass and reading the accounts of making that trek when there was no road, um, literally cutting trees as they went to get up and over Teton Pass. They settled the South Park area, which is a little bit south of Jackson. Uh, it was the Cheney and Wilsons, and then they eventually settled Wilson, Wyoming. Uh, and these were large families. Uh, and then Mormon Row uh was additional Mormon families that settled the area. Agriculture was terrible here. Um, we have a short growing season, generally pretty rocky and terrible soils. There's a lack of access to markets, so even if you can grow something, you can't sell it. So there's not really um kind of an economic uh benefit. And so most folks they would they would farm kind of sustenance farming for their family, but they turned to uh ranching and cattle ranching early on.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

You mentioned that you study a lot of homesteaders in the area. Can you tell me about any particularly interesting ones?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, so this the one that jumps to mind, she's a homesteader technically, but I like to think of her more of like a speculator. She homesteaded, her name was Geraldine Lucas, and she homesteaded right um north of Bradley Taggart, south of Jenny Lake, so right at the base of the Tetons. You can still go see her homestead today. It's called the Lucas Fabian Homestead, right off the Inner Park Loop Road. And she came out as a single woman who had raised a child as a single woman, uh, divorced. Uh she had gone to Oberlin College as a single mother and got her degree, so she was able to go back to New York City and uh teach in the public school system until she retired. When she retired, she came out to Jackson. She did have a few brothers who were living here, so she wasn't the first in her family to come to Jackson. But she uh homesteaded a 160 acre uh homestead and argued with the government all the way through, debating landlines. There's amazing correspondence back and forth between she and the government. Uh, and she built a cabin for herself. She eventually had a kind of a helper on the property, um, and then she built a cabin. Beautiful cabin for her son, who never lived there, sadly. Uh, he lived in Alaska. She used to ride to town, she had a she used to ride to town with a dog's led in the winter uh and several dogs. But she also had, I think it was like a 1929 Buick or something like that, a touring car that she used to drive around in. So she just sounds like a character. She had thousands of books in her library. Um, but my favorite story is uh in the 19, I'm guessing 20s or 30s, yeah, would have been either really late 20s or early 30s, the Snake River Land Company, which was John D. Rockefeller's company that was created to buy up um land to eventually donate to become a national park, uh, they approached her and said, What would it take for you to sell your property? Because it really was in the heart of the base of the Tetons. And she said, If you have if you piled silver dollars as high as the Tetons, I still wouldn't consider it. Uh so she was steadfast anti, anti-government, anti-selling her property. Ironically, it ended up um the lawyer for, I think he was the manager for the Snake River Land Company, maybe not the lawyer, ended up uh living, and that that's why it's called the Lucas Fabian homestead. They were the Fabians uh at the property for many years uh prior to uh it being turned over as part of the donation to Grand Teton National Park. So as much as she didn't want it to go to the park, it eventually became part of the park.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

I hope maybe a little bit in retrospect, she would be happy that it's you know a part of this protected place and that it hasn't turned into maybe something else that she wouldn't have wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Yes. And I forgot to mention the speculating part was she also was buying up, I think sometimes using the Homestead Act or the Desert Land Act. She was really creative with trying to get other properties and then selling them, obviously, at a profit. So she was a wheeler and dealer. Um, and she was retirement age, yeah, and a and a single woman.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

You talked about um the larger Mormon migration from Utah into this area. And so a really um iconic spot in the park is the Mormon Real Historic District. And there's also some really famous photos of the barns in front of the Tetons, and it's just one of the most classic imagery you can conjure when thinking of this area. Um, but maybe those who haven't seen the photo, could you like just paint us a picture?

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Yeah, so there are several barns, I think about three or four along Mormon Row, and they were built out of necessity. I mean, they were whatever material they had around. Usually there was a central bay that was built first, and then they would add on so they could fit their hogs in there, and then there was a chicken coop. Well, the chicken coop was usually separate, but they build another side for the horses. I mean, this was really eked out, and they have these iconic steep roofs. And I was asked all the time when I worked for the Park Service whether, you know, the the builders of these barns were echoing the the shape of the Tetons and the and the you know geographic, it's geologic feature. And I said, I highly doubt it. They were just trying to build as steep a roof as they could uh to shed snow because the steeper it is, you know, kind of the less structure you need. And they didn't have great materials. They were um taking down trees off of uh Timbered Island, uh, or probably off of actually there, they were taking them off of Blacktail Butte and then you know dragging them to their site and building these barns, all in the short building season that we have here, like three months. So they are iconic and beautiful, mostly I think, because of that beautiful um kind of play between the shape of the barn roofs and the Tetons, and then also the graying and aging uh wood that is just so beautiful to look at, that patina. Uh, but I always do remind people that you know this was far from aesthetic for them. It was it was really eking out of light. And something else I love about Mormon Row is that if you think about a homestead, um, if you think about a section of uh of land on a map, you know, they are squares. But what the Mormons did when they came to the valley was they instead cut up their um acreage in these really long, skinny parcels. And they did that so that all the houses were closer together. So they had enough farming land, but they were such a communal establishment and in community, they had a school, they had a church, they had, you know, all these houses that the kids I would imagine were kind of, and they had many kids, you know, flowing from and to. And so I love that they just kind of bucked, you know, the the general land office's idea of what uh you know a land parcel should look like uh to fit how they lived.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And those structures that are there today, I'm guessing those are still the original barns and they're just with with a little preservation help, maybe. Um, and then what is the preservation of these structures look like on a like I would say maybe on like a yearly basis, or or even just what's kind of the timetable for making sure that these structures are sticking around?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Yeah, I mean, ideally it would be on an annual basis, but as you know, the Park Service has such a huge deferred maintenance backlog, even on you know, visitor centers and pit toilets, let alone their historic structures. So unfortunately, just due to budget and staffing constraints, they they cannot get to them on an annual basis. So I would say they had fallen on hard times by the 1990s. The a lot, most of the families had left the Mormon Row Historic District, 50s or 60s. They had sold to the Park Service and moved. Um and so, you know, they had maintained them up to that point, but after 30 years of deferred maintenance between, let's say, the 60s and 90s, they were falling in on themselves. Park Service unfortunately removed some of the buildings because this was a time, and this is important to mention on a hit on an episode about history, Grand Titan National Park, like many Western parks, considered itself a natural resources park, a natural park. And so any cultural resources, what we would call cultural resources today, but any buildings, whether they were historic or not, were considered a blight on the landscape. And so the park pretty aggressively uh removed historic structures. And so thankfully that didn't result in the removal of the barn or the residential structures, which I imagine maybe they were thinking, oh, we could use this as park housing or something. And maybe the barn, they just thought we can't take these down. But they removed chicken coops, they removed fencing, they removed outbuildings, outhouses. So we don't have the full picture. We have documentation of the full picture from historic photos, aerials, things like that. Um, but we are missing many of the buildings. So the barns had fallen on hard times and the residential structures had fallen on hard times. Uh, there were several different volunteer groups from the Midwest, interestingly, from Michigan and Wisconsin who started coming out in the late 1990s. I know. Bless the Midwesterners.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Good old Midwest. I'm a Midwesterner. Yep, I will always give Midwesterners their flowers.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yep. They were coming to America. Uh, they were teachers, uh, but they they deserve um huge recognition. They had an amazing uh preservationist they were working under named Harrison Goodall, who did all of his work um as a volunteer and would lead these really complex barn preservation projects because you have structural elements, you have materials that are no longer store ready. So now you're making your own uh you know, log floor joists, and um thankfully you can still buy shakes, you don't have to make them yourself. But uh we had an expert leading uh the preservation effort out there. Uh and so thanks to the work in the late 90s, um, they kind of brought them back into a condition where the Park Service could maintain them more than have to heavily rehabilitate them. Now, a few things happened. The Grand Town National Park Foundation became really interested in historic structures uh in the like 2010s. Uh, and so they started fundraising and they have put a lot of money into the preservation work out at Mormon Row. And then also the Park Service um invested in some of the residential structures, and they're going to be using them as uh park housing. But then also like the pink house. Uh, there was there was huge cracking, and I just say that like everyone knows it, but it that's definitely an iconic structure on Mormon Row. It's pink stucco um and it's between the barns. Um, it had developed terrible cracking, the foundation was sinking, and so um Grantytown National Park Foundation and the Park Service uh got together and um did a major rehabilitation project on that building.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Do you have any tips for visitors visiting historic sites in the park that would encourage you know being a good steward of history?

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yeah. Well, one is uh look, don't touch. Pretend you're in a museum. Classic. Because if we all, you know, ran our fingers across something or grabbed just a little bit of stucco that was, you know, kind of falling off, um, we wouldn't have these buildings uh left. And I think most visitors know that and come with that respect, but it's worth saying, just like you wouldn't take a rock or anything else from the park. Don't take something off of a building. Um, another thing I'd love to convey is, you know, if it's closed, it's closed for a reason. You definitely see a lot of attempts at opening shutter doors and trying to get into these buildings. And I assure you, there is nothing in them. Um, and we've actually started putting, or the park service has started putting little um, I wouldn't call them peepholes, but like little squares with um mesh behind them so you can see inside, but it's still protecting the building like a shutter would to prevent, you know, air and water and everything from coming in and also protecting, preventing people from walking in and wandering around and potentially hurting themselves. Because a lot of these buildings have unstable floors and there are actually wires running inside a lot of the barns as a stabilization method. Uh, so they really are held up as kind of a landscape level um outdoor experience. And then ask questions. I mean, of not only perk service rangers, but um, you know, there's interpretation out there, just even doing some Googling if you're curious. Like, I would love for people to not be like me in those homestead cabins when I was leading a snowshoe tour and just kind of like shrug their shoulders and not know what it is, but you know, take the next step and and learn a little more.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Sound advice. Thank you. The story of how this area became a national park is so interesting to me because we've I've covered uh in another episode the history of Yellowstone National Park, which felt like a pretty maybe a little more straightforward path for getting it being established as a national park. And I remember kind of learning about Grand Teton, and I was like, that's just a very unconventional way to get there. So, you know, homesteaders have been there, the places, you know, maybe becoming a little more popular after the the um crash with the beaver trade. So when did the conversation turn to, you know, should this area be a national park or protected in some way, or just how did it get started?

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Yeah, so in the early 1920s, there wasn't a recognition, and this came after Stephen Leake um took a lot of the famous photographs of all the elk dying, and that created the National Elk Refuge. So anyway, there had been photographs and documentation and paintings and all sorts of kind of accounts of how beautiful the area was. And in the I believe it was the early 1920s, Horace Albright and some others that were, you know, instrumental in the creation of the National Park Service recognized that there, that you know, Yellowstone wasn't enough. There was this other area that needed to be conserved. It was an extremely unpopular idea locally because this was a really struggling town. So the idea to take money out of the tax rolls and therefore decrease any amount, you know, of already the little amount of money they had as a community. And Jackson, the town of Jackson was incorporated in 1914. Uh, and it ended up being, you know, the biggest town among the three or four that we had Grovont, Kelly, Wilson, and Jackson. Uh, and so the idea of creating a national park in this already struggling community, who, by the way, really liked their grazing rights, their hunting rights, and just generally their right to do whatever they want to do where they want to do it, did not land well. Uh, and so in 1923, there was a meeting uh with uh Horace Albright, um, I believe John D. Rockefeller was there, uh, Struthers Burt, and a few other um kind of local business people and kind of movers and shakers from Jackson, the meeting with these kind of more national figures who were interested in the park plan, they called it. Uh, and that was called uh that was the park plan meeting uh in July of 1923, and that took place in the Mod Noble Cabin, which you can still go and visit, and it's actually set up for tea as it would have been uh when the Jackson Hole Plan meeting happened. And so starting in the early 20s, uh up to 1929, uh they reached, they hit a ton of resistance. And the initial idea was that it would be an extension of Yellowstone. Um, that was not popular because the locals wanted compromises and things written into our park enabling legislation or organic act that would be very different from Yellowstone, which truly is set aside for tourism. And so the idea of it being an extension of Yellowstone was, I think, shot down somewhat early, uh, and that it would be its own park. And so the core part of the park, which is basically the peaks and the glacial lakes, was created in 1929. And even that, I mean, there's uh a great kind of epic story, the back and forth that even had to happen to get the 1929 park created. Uh, and then John D. Rockefeller Jr. was buying up property. He recognized, and many others recognized, that that was not enough. Really, what Grand Town National Park needed to be was more than just the skinny little corridor of just the mountains and the and the lakes. It needed to include the valley floor. Um, and so kind of took it on his own to buy up land, and it was called the Snake River Land Company. So locals didn't know who they were selling to. They didn't realize they were selling to um one of the richest men in the world. And however, there has been excellent documentation since then that he paid more than fair market price. He was not trying to, you know, kind of cut people a sour deal. Um property was very cheap back then because there had been this cattle, this attempt at cattle ranching, but that actually crashed in the 19 teens. There was a crash in um beef prices, um, I believe after World War I. Uh, and so I mean, this land was not worth much at all. So they were happy to find a buyer because there was no one else coming in to buy this. This area was not growing and was not thriving. So they a lot of people sold their land to John D. Rockefeller, again, not knowing that's who it was. He um kind of patched together the valley floor mostly and was ready to donate it to the National Park Service, well, to the to the government, U.S. government, to become part of Grand Teton National Park. And you want to read, you know, crazy debates and congressional tomfoolery and you know, slander campaigns and all sorts of things. That is the story of the creation of the monument in 1943. And then eventually the monument um was turned into the expansion and just kind of joined with the initial 1929 section in 1950. But at one point, John D. Rockefeller said, you either take my free land that I'm giving you, or I'm gonna sell it to the highest bidder. And so that's what finally prompted the government to act because they did want to expand. It was just met with so much uh resistance. So among the compromises in our legislation were the grazing and the hunting, as I had mentioned. There was also, I believe, for 10 years we were compensated for the lost tax rolls. And anyone who knows Jackson now knows that we certainly made up for it in spades. Um, tax-wise, we're much better off now with the all the sales tax and tourism and lodging tax um and the with popularity as a gateway community uh than we would have been just continuing to cattle ranch.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Why was John D. Rockefeller Jr. so interested in this area? Was he just like the first, you know, millionaire, billionaire that bought a home outside Jackson?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Well, it's funny because I don't remember who took him out here. It was probably Albright, and I should know this story like the back of my hand. I think it was Albright, who had this idea of we need to expand the park. Uh-oh, we need to involve philanthropy because the government's not going to do this on their own. And I believe he brought um, and there are some amazing photos of Rockefeller and his wife on Jenny Lake riding around a little boat in the late 20s. Um, so they were intentionally led out here. It wasn't, I don't think, their own discovery. And I'm assuming at that point, Rockefeller had already started, he did conservation elsewhere in the country. So I'm guessing Albright made the connection of, you know, he's willing to do philanthropy in the spirit of conservation. This would be a great project for him. Let's get him out here. And I should also mention it sounds so external when I say that it was Albright and it was Rockefeller. There were many in this community. There were dance halls, there were billboards, there were all sorts of things. Like apparently the section between, you know, Taggart and Jenny Lake was just kind of littered with um tourist attractions, if you will, like not so much attractions, but dance halls and things like that. Um, so there were locals that that realized, hey, if we just let it continue to be privately exploited, it's gonna look like Niagara Falls did. I mean, that was a beautiful resource that really got overdeveloped. So it was not only the outsiders that said the locals couldn't reconcile how do we protect a place, put it aside, and still continue to afford to live here. And, you know, because we these are our hunting grounds, these are our grazing grounds.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

And that wraps up part one of the history of Grand Teton National Park. Join us on part two where we'll cover how the park has evolved since its founding, the iconic dude ranches of the area, how conservation has changed in the park over the years, and where you can check out some cool historic sites. Voices of Greater Yellowstone is a podcast by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a conservation nonprofit that works with all people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. If you enjoy the podcast and want to help us reach more people, please consider rating and reviewing Voices of Greater Yellowstone on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The more reviews and ratings we receive, the more we can share the stories and science of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem across the world. As always, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.