History of Grand Teton National Park (Part 2)

Grand Teton National Park may be known for its dramatic peaks and postcard views, but the story didn’t stop once the park was established. In many ways, that’s when a whole new chapter began.

Since obtaining its national park status, the park has been shaped by decades of change—expanding boundaries, growing visitation, wildlife management, historic preservation, and ongoing debates about how people use and protect this landscape. What started as a relatively small national park eventually became one of the most recognized public lands in the country.

We’re excited to share part 2 of the history of Grand Teton National Park. If you thought it was all done once the park was created, you’re about to be amazed!

Katherine Wonson is joining us again today, so let’s learn about how the history of this amazing landscape wasn’t exactly a walk in the 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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> Katherine Wonson's Website

> A Place Called Jackson Hole by John Daugherty

> Crucible for Conservation: The Struggle for Grand Teton National Park by Robert Righter

> Diary of a Dude Wrangler by Struthers Burt

> And That's the Way it Was in Jackson's Hole by Jack Huyler

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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 > NPS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Plopped down at the BC Dude Ranch after that kind of epic journey. And she said, I'll take my hot shower now. I'll take my hot bath now. And they had a you know a wash tub and they put a little bit of boiling water in it and a little bit of cold water. And they said, Here you go. Welcome to the BC.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Grand Tita National Park may be known for its dramatic peaks and postcard views, but the story didn't stop once the park was established. In many ways, that's when a whole new chapter began. Since obtaining its national park status, the park has been shaped by decades of change, expanding boundaries, growing vegetation, wildlife management, historic preservation, and ongoing debates about how people use and protect this landscape. What started as a relatively small national park eventually became one of the most recognized public lands in the country. 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 Reed. We're excited to share part two of the history of Grand Teton National Park. If you thought we were all done once the park was created, you're about to be amazed. Catherine Wanson is joining us again today. So let's learn about how the history of this amazing landscape wasn't exactly a walk in the park. All right, let's jump in. So then the park is established. And what does tourism look like in those early years? Were there also like bear feeding shows in the area?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Or what were we shoulding up to do? We did not have as many bear feeding shows as Yellowstone did, although Sukinsolo Murphy just wrote a good, great book on the history of uh bear, like of kind of bear ecology, um, but kind of humor human interaction with um bears in the Grand Teton area. So I highly recommend that. Um so early tourism, you came really early on, the furthest you could get was Ashton, Idaho. Um later than that, you could make it all the way to Victor, Idaho, but then you would have to take a stagecoach up and over, and there were actually road houses on Teton Pass because this was not a one-shot, quick, quick and easy deal. Yep. So you'd spend a night. Uh, and then you would get picked up, I would assume in Wilson, but maybe it was Jackson, by your respective um guide or dude ranch, wherever you were going. And so we actually have these beautiful wagons that still have the brands of the different uh dude ranches, and they're also in Moose near the Mond Noble cabin uh in a little log building made just to display them. So you get picked up by your ranch or your guide or whomever, and then that was another however many, you know, hour um horseback ride or you know, wagon ride uh out to your ranch, and then you would finally arrive. And one of my favorite stories from the BBC is I think it was the Countess who ended up being a longtime local here, but it was her first trip. I don't know if she was the guest or not, but she plopped down at the BBC Dude Ranch after that kind of epic journey, and she said, I'll take my hot shower now, or I'll take my hot bath now. And they had a you know, a wash tub and they put a little bit of boiling water in it and a little bit of cold water. They said, Here you go. Welcome to the BC. Uh so you know, even once you arrived, it was rustic and it was rustic by design. There were some ranches, like the Bear Paw Ranch, uh, that did try to play up, you know, you're gonna get a Simmons um mattress and they had plumbing really early on and they had electricity early on. Uh, but generally speaking, this was, I mean, even that was still a very rust, rough and rustic experience for people at the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah. Tell me a little more about these dude ranches. Did they pop up because of increased tourism to the area because of the park? Or were they kind of um around before the park was created?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah. So the first one that we know of in Grand Teton was Lewis Joy, uh, the JY Ranch, and that was started in 1908. And essentially earlier than Jackson's dude ranches, you have, I believe, the Eaton's Ranch in Northwestern, in uh outside of Sheridan, I believe, Wyoming. They had the realization that it was more profitable to wrangle people than cattle. And so they turned these cattle ranches into these tourist facilities. They still kept the cattle and the horses, and actually less so the cattle, but still some cattle, because people were there to be part of the cattle ranching lifestyle. But the cattle was no longer the cash cow. It was the accommodation, the meals, the horsepack trip rides. Later on, they started doing river, um, river rides or you know, float trips and everything like that, hikes. Um, but people would come out for months at a time because once you take a trip like that, you're not turning around a week later. So you would come out for a couple months. Uh, the BBC Dude Ranch and a few other ones actually developed junior ranches, like boys and girls, I think mostly boys. Um, so you would actually like your kid would go to summer camp while you got to stay at your dude ranch. It was a whole integrated system. Uh, but they were, I mean, the memories I hear, and I've listened to a lot of oral histories from the White Grass Ranch, where I did a lot of my work, um, just golden times for people. They stepped out of kind of all the social norms and the moors and the dress and the etiquette, mostly of the East Coast, some people coming from the West Coast, and they got here, and literally some of these ranches had a store where you would buy your Wranglers, you'd buy your boots, you'd buy your, you know, t-shirts, just plain white t-shirts, and just drop all the rest of it that you were used to, you know, kind of putting, putting on a show and putting on a certain way. So I think it was a huge relief for a lot of people. Um, and I think particularly women were able to, you know, kind of have some agency and go on a ride and um, you know, fish. Um, I know there was actually a women's hunting expedition at one point. Um, so really got to do things that women at the time were not doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Are any of these dude ranches still in operation today?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

So the only one that was around in the early dude ranching period is the Triangle X Ranch, which is on the Outer Park Loop Road. Definitely worth a visit. Their barn is from the 1920s, I believe. Um they're celebrating, yeah, they're celebrating their centennial this year. So uh 1926 it was built. There are many more dude ranches that are still standing that you can visit, but they are not being used as dude ranches. So that's what I love about the Triangle X. And there are other dude ranches, um, like the Moosehead Ranch, for example, but they don't date quite as early back as the Triangle X.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Why do their names always have letters and shapes?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah. So they all like I said, they were based on cattle ranches. The people wanted to feel as though they were at a cattle ranch. And I should explain too. So you would go stay at the what they called the upper ranch, which was usually in the park. It was not always the best grazing land, so then they would acquire land south of the park or anywhere else, like over in Dubois, somewhere else where you had great grazing. Uh, and they that would be called the lower ranch, and they would actually have cattle drives, and they still to this day you can join a cattle drive between some of these. Uh, well, it's usually two ranches now outside of the park, but people that have the rights uh to do this. But so it was based on cattle ranching, and so all cattle brands to keep it easy, right? It's just letters and shapes. So it's kind of fun, like are lazy S, right? The S is lazy, so it's tilting a little bit, or triangle X is a triangle and an X. Uh so it was basically literally the brand that would go on the cattle.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Gotcha. So they would either like would they come up with the brand first, or we'd be like, you know what? I like a sideways S, and so I'm gonna incorporate that into my brand.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Name of the owner. So white grass is a good example because the brand is actually H quarter circle B. But we say we say white grass, right? And so people are like the one has nothing to do with the other. H and B were um Hammond and Bisfam, who were the two original homesteaders, um, and the quarter circle is just the the letter in between. So I think that's how they they started with their letters and then they would get kind of fun and creative. I bet there was a you know session around a fireplace and you know, some adult beverages deciding like what fun, how they were gonna combine their letters and what you know shapes they were gonna use.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

You can definitely imagine that happening around a campfire and the arguments that could ensue of how do, yeah, how are we gonna how are we gonna brand ourselves, literally? Okay, so Green Teton in the Teton Range also has a famed mountaineering history. Could you tell me a bit about how you know hiking in the Tetons and summiting the Grand became a mountaineering bucket list item?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

I don't know much about the mountaineering history. I know that um William Owen was supposedly the first to summon in 1898. Um and he may not have been the first. Certainly there may have been an indigenous, I was gonna say climber, but frankly, just an indigenous person who climbed the grand. Um, and andor other earlier climbers that reached the summit and just it wasn't well documented. Um, another Geraldine Lucas story, uh, the homesteader I referenced earlier, the speculator homesteader, she was the second woman to climb the grand. She was 59 years old and she pretty much had to be like hoisted up. There are photos of her, like covered in ropes and people pulling her up, but she wanted to make it up. And to this day, when you go out to the Lucas Fabian Historic District, if you look at the grand and you walk supposedly a I don't I say supposedly because I'm not sure it really is a hundred paces away, but I've been there between her cabin and the grand, you'll find where a rock that has a plaque on it and is where her ashes are, uh, because she loved the grand so much. So it did become famous, it became a bucket list item. Um, it there were you know many new technologies in climbing um explored here. Paul Petzel was a huge um early climber. Um, we now um Yvonne Schnard lives here. Um, so it definitely is a climber's mecca. We have steep granite uh mountains to climb that are very challenging. We have you know challenging environmental conditions that make it even more technical than other areas, and then the elevation is super high even compared to um some other of our mountain uh kind of rivals as far as climbing destinations. So it continues to this day. Um, and you know, one of the concessions that we have in the park and um are the are the mountain guides that uh still take people up safely. Um and then we have people that are going up independently um that you know you don't need you don't need to go with a guide, you can go on your own.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Cool. Have you ever been to the top?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

I have. Uh and it's funny because the route I took, now I'm trying to remember, one of went up or down, I don't remember, but it was the Owen Spaulding. And at the time I didn't know who Owen was because again, I was like a 23-year-old and just all the history eventually came in, and you know, it's kind of cool to think that apparently was his route. Uh but yeah, done, done it, had a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Could you tell me a bit about the famed Muri families and their impact on conservation in Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah. So you had two sets of Muries. You had um, actually, I'm gonna start that over. I'm just gonna focus on okay. Um, so you had um Olos and Marty Muri, who um, and they're both of their half siblings, interestingly, also lived at the Muri Ranch, and they had a whole conservation uh story of their own as well. Um, Adolf and um Louise Mart uh Murray. Um but I'm gonna focus on Olas and Marty. Uh so they met in Alaska um and they took a honeymoon actually in the Alaskan wilderness. I mean, just amazing stories from up there. Eventually, um Olas Murray um did a lot of work on um the caribou and um elk populations, and he was really influential um in creating uh legislation around uh conservation um and strongly influenced conservation policy. Uh he was instrumental, he well, let me back up. He was uh president of the Wilderness Society, uh, and one of the Wilderness Society's kind of biggest, I would say, feats maybe, um, was helping pass the Wilderness Act. Uh and so the Wilderness Society, you know, had a headquarters, which now I can't remember where it was, but it was on one of the coasts, I'm guessing DC. And Olaz said, I will be president, but only if I can do it from Jackson Hole. And so what's interesting was one of the first remote EDs uh doing it from Jackson, and he would also bring all of the members, all of the you know, board members and staff members out to the Murray Ranch, uh, which is in Moose, right behind the um visitor center. And there's actually a little walking path you can take from uh the Craig Thomas Discovery Visitor Center. And he would assemble the Wilderness Society and have these meetings actually in wilderness rather than you know in a boardroom back in DC. Uh, and so he was instrumental, and as was um Marty Mary with just kind of all their networking and letter writing and um kind of behind-the-scenes politics in the passage of the Wilderness Act. Unfortunately, he passed away before it was passed. Um and Marty, I mean, fascinatingly, like went on to live another, let's see, gosh, at least another 40 years. I can't do my math, but um had an entirely additional conservation career. And she's most remembered, I should say most remembered, but she was highly influential in the Arctic National. I'm sorry, in Nilka. I can't remember it, it is the Alaskan uh Wilderness Act, and I cannot remember what it all stands for. Um but she's called the grandmother of conservation. She received the um presidential medal of freedom, I believe, um, in her lifetime. And when she passed away, she left the ranch to um the um, I believe it was called the Muri Foundation, and then eventually the Muri Foundation kind of partnered with the Teton Science School, who now runs it today, and they have a conservation mission out there. They host students, they host groups, and they try to teach about living in wild places and the importance of protecting wild places.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

To pull on that thread a little further, how do you think conservation has evolved in the park over the years from its beginning to you know more recent years?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah, so I would say early on it was all about, I mean, in that first creation of the park is a great representation. It was all about the majestic peaks, uh, the glacial lakes, the megafauna, kind of the obvious things, if you will, and that's not to disparage those wonderful things. I would say conservation has evolved in that we now look at entire ecosystems and migration corridors. Um, we're much kind of more macro and seeing the mountains and the glacial lakes as just part of this larger system. And then I consider part of conservation the preservation of these cultural resources as well and acknowledging the human history that took place in the park and the identification or the just naming of the fact that this was not an untouched wilderness. People have been living here for 11,000 years. Um, you know, we don't have kind of the structures like we have from the 20th century and the late 19th century, um, but that doesn't mean that there aren't there isn't evidence of their of their use. And so kind of getting away from this view of national parks as untouched and primitive, and um, you know, those were literally words that were used in the Wilderness Act that are that are simply we know now today in our more nuanced understanding of conservation that you know that is not the reality.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Very well said. An interesting thing about Grand Teton National Park is it's still expanding today. Can you tell me a little bit about how that works?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah, so sometimes it's uh I don't want to say premeditated, but sometimes there are inholdings in the park. So these were bits of land that Rockefeller was not able to acquire. An owner just said, Nope, I want to hang on to it. So there are dude ranches, there are just you know private properties that were even buildings built in the last you know 10 years. Um they're not all historic buildings in these inholdings. And so the park, you know, strategically tries to buy those up over the years. And let me tell you, it was a lot easier um in the early 2000s and before when property values were a lot lower to use um the I think it's a land conservation fund. There's a fund, a government fund to buy up pieces of parkland that are within the boundaries of a park in holdings. Uh, so that happens, you know, with a lot of kind of pre-thought and strategy. And again, it happens less and less because the property values are getting so high. Uh, and then we have things like uh the Kelly parcel, and there was also a parcel on Mormon Row that were set aside as state lands for school districts. You know, they're called their school parcels, and the state owned it, and the state was interested in in offloading it and just set a timeline and said, we're gonna we need to offload it by this date, or we're gonna sell it or lease it to someone else. And so that put the park and the Grand Teton National Park Foundation on high alert to raise those funds and acquire those properties. So the park is expanding uh internally. There is no kind of boundary expansion or anything that the park's trying to grow larger in that sense. It's more of an infill of lands that don't belong to the park but are inside the park.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah. And if we have any listeners that, you know, follow GYC pretty closely, the Kelly parcel might sound familiar and that just believe that deal was inked in late 2024, where um I think it was a 640-acre parcel of land was um added to the park and you know protected from development because who knows what could have happened to it when it was sold to the highest bidder. So that was a an exciting recent addition to Grand Teton National Park and really awesome for all the people that worked hard to make that happen. Can you tell me a bit about your current historical preservation work?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah, um, most of it is outside of Grand Teton, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know. I get to go to amazing places. So I'm doing a little work in Mesa Verde National Park and Yosemite, um a state park called a Silomar. Um and I'm doing some work locally for ranches, dude ranches mostly outside of the park, uh outside of the park boundaries. But interestingly, most of them had some kind of connection, like an upper ranch that what once was part of the park. Um, another interesting thing I'm doing in historic preservation is I am teaching workshops on historic preservation and kind of the trade skills, but also the preservation approach. And then in Grand Teton National Park, what I am doing uh locally is I am leading history tours uh as a commercial use authorization holder within the park, teaching the history things like we were talking about today.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

That's perfect. Um over your information, and we'll make sure to include that in the show notes for anyone visiting the park and wants to go on history tour. What's one of the most interesting things you've learned about Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, it's gonna sound like I'm just um obsessed with these female homesteaders, but I kind of am because it's just the more you dig and you learn, one of my projects right now I'm working on is for a uh dude ranch outside of the park. And these women that came here sight unseen, many of them were school teachers uh from the Midwest, um, but brought came out here, you know, had a wild hair to get away from whatever they had grown up in and whatever they were used to. And I just I have I came out at 23 by myself and I thought that was, you know, wild in my my own vehicle that I could drive across country. Uh so just the more I learned about these, you know, the women and men, frankly, because it was also just a huge gamble and and an unknown, even for the you know, homesteaders who are coming over in groups, just what or what are we going to be greeted by? Um, what is in store for us? Nobody else has done this before. So the more I learn about the early settlement and just kind of the leaps people had to make and the faith. Um, and then the community that grew up around here. It was hard scrabble living, it was, you know, hand to mouth at times, especially in the early 20th century. But then you look at everything going on downtown. There was a church, there was a gun club, there were dances, um, they're amazing. There was the Hoot Nanny, there's just all these amazing community kind of community assets, um, you know, rather than just living out on their ranch and kind of have, you know, you have this image of the rugged individualist and everything. Like that was not this place. I don't know if it's any place, frankly. Like these people may have been individuals, but they very much relied on community. And there are also these stories of people saving each other, you know, like someone would be in financial ruin or somebody, you know, there'd be children that were orphaned and brought in by other families. So the more I learn about the park, yeah, the more I learn about what spirit it took to just show up here for the first time, man, woman, child, and then also um what what then by those kind of people, what kind of community they built when they all came together.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

If visitors are driving through the park and they maybe only have time to stop at one historical site, what would you recommend that they check out?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

It's like picking a favorite child. Which I can do. Give me a second. Um I love the Chapel of the Transfiguration, which is right in Moose. And it is, they call it log craftsman style. Excellent craftsmanship, just a beautifully built log structure. Like logs are coped super tight. It has stained glass. It is just this little chapel that has the biggest view in the world. And instead of stained glass at the end of the, you know, where the where the altar is, you look out at the Tetons. That is your, and it's just like the perfect statement for this area. Like that is our, you know, everything you needed to know in the spiritual world. Just is all out there. It is just it's breathtaking to go in there. Yeah. And when was that built? That was the 1920s, maybe 20, 29. The land was donated from Maud Noble, who I mentioned before, who also hosted the park plan meeting, um, and fundraised by locals to, again, this is that that community thing. Like they got sick of driving in, uh, you know, riding by horse nine miles into town, so they decided they needed their own church. So they banded together, fundraised, people donated logs, people donated labor, and voila, not only did they build a church, they built this really beautiful uh kind of diamond.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

If people want to learn more about the history of Grand Teton National Park, what books would you recommend? And maybe we could say between three to five books that you are like, yeah, this is this is maybe either just foundational to know about the park, or this is a really like niche interest that you just gotta learn more about. And we'll definitely to our listeners, we'll put links to all these in the show notes so you can check them out.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Yes. So I'd say the primer, if you can get your hands on a copy, because it's out of print, is called A Place Called Jackson Hole by John Doherty. And that is the tip to tail, starting with indigenous use of the area, all the way up to modern day. Really well researched. It was written late 1990s, and I like rarely find something that's not correct in there, right? Even though we had much more basic research tools than we have today, where we can search newspapers.com and such. It is just um super well researched, super well written. That's my first recommendation. Then I would say Crucible for Conservation by Robert Ryder, uh, which it really details and it's again well written. This this one is well researched and well written, but well written in the sense that it's a story, it's a page turner. You want to keep figuring out what's gonna happen next because the back and forth to create this park was ridiculous. And so he documents the entire journey from the idea of a plan to the creation. I would highly recommend that. And then the two that I find really good fun, I'll put it that way. One is Diary of a Dude Wrangler by Struthers Burt. Um, and that is his story again, is this person who showed up kind of he had stayed at a dude ranch one once before and then just had this wild hair that he was gonna start his own dude ranch and then built it from the ground up, hiring unskilled laborers and you know, all sorts of shenanigans and just literally picking out the site where his dude ranch was gonna be. Uh, so he was a prolific author. So this is again well written because you know he'd published many, many books, he and his wife, Catherine Newlandbert. Um, and so that's a fun read, and that has been republished. You can get your hands on it. And then the other one I'd recommend is called And That's the Way It Was in Jackson Hole, and that's by Jack Heiler, who was um the son of Coulter Heiler, who's founded the Bear Paw Ranch, and he is a storyteller through and through. He spins us. I mean, he I met him in his lifetime. He used to host fireside, uh, you know, campfire storytelling and everything. Like he's just a great storyteller. So the stories themselves are great, but how he spins them as an author, um it it's a real fun, and each chapter is a different um kind of tale or a different person he's telling about, so you can read it more like short story style.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Perfect. We'll make sure that everyone can go check those out. Um and then Catherine, to wrap us up, this is the question we ask all of our guests is who is your conservation hero and why?

SPEAKER_00 26:16

I mean, my brain is in Grand Teton right now as far as conservation hero, and I'm gonna keep it there because there are many conservation heroes out there. But Struthers Burt, who I have mentioned, who founded the BBC Dude Ranch, he was instrumental in convincing the other Dude Ranchers whose personal interests seemed more aligned with not creating a park. And I would say, from the research and from what I can understand, and I've met his grandson, he was so principled that he showed the other dude ranchers that he was not just talking, he sold his ranch to Rockefeller. And at that point, he knew who Rockefeller was, he knew he was selling it to to say, look, like it's not about my interest or your interest, this is about the public good. Uh, and so I just love the message that that sends. And then I love that it's my one of my favorite places in the park uh that, you know, is that was the birthplace of that idea. And he eventually started another ranch in what he thought was outside of the park and eventually became the part of the park too. Um, but you know, it's not as if he gave up B ranching altogether. He truly wanted to say this is important, and you all should follow suit, and we should be pro-park creation, even though we feel like it's not in our best interest. It's in the best interest of the greater good.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. Well, Catherine, I had a blast chatting with you about history. I'm sure we could probably chat for another hour or two and dive into all of the weeds and learn all the little nuances of the history of this great place. But thank you for all you do and thanks for stopping by. Thank you. It's been real fun. I love talking history. Thank you so much to Catherine for sharing her incredibly deep and enthusiastic knowledge of the history of Grand Teton National Park. If you'd like to learn more about her work and her tours, we've placed the link in the show notes. And I don't know about you, but I'm so excited to check out her book recommendations. If you'd like to take a look too, we've placed those links in the show notes for you to peruse. 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'd like to receive two free stickers in the mail, sign up and become a podcast insider. Insiders receive exclusive opportunities to ask our guests questions in the episode, so make sure to join via the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for being a steadfast supporter of Voices of Greater Yellowstone and this place we all love, the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. As always, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.