Within this space the Creator must have intended to bring man in humility to his knees. Imagine traveling into the range from either south or north, toward its center. The peaks loom ever higher and steeper and more dramatic until, as Fryxell points out, with the 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) between Avalanche and Cascade, two of the canyons piercing the range, there stand in close ranks the South, Middle, and Grand Teton, Mt. Owen, Teewinot, Nez Perce, Cloudveil Dome, and many spires. These form an overwhelming Gothic assemblage of peaks, a concentrated and unforgettable mountain experience for anyone. And it all goes on, and on, and on, north or south, from there.
This is the Teton Range, but it is not the whole picture. The glaciers that during the Ice Age came through the whole valley left lakes as a row of jewels at the feet of the peaks: Phelps, Taggart, Bradley, Jenny, Leigh, and then finally Jackson lakes, through which the Snake River travels for some 17 miles southward. From the lakes the flat glacial floor extends to meet the river in mid-valley and beyond to all the other beautiful, though not quite so spectacular, mountains and hills that form the north, east, and south walls of the valley known as Jackson Hole.
Those “other mountains” are the Yellowstone Plateau to the north, the Absaroka, the Washakie, and Gros Ventre, merging southward into the Hoback and Snake River Ranges. It is immediately clear why the first mountain men called this type of valley a hole. As the Snake winds its way south from its source in a high mountain meadow in southern Yellowstone National Park, into and out of Jackson Lake, it is joined by other streams: Pacific Creek, the Buffalo River, the Gros Ventre. All are bordered by cottonwood and aspen and spruce and fir forests. The scene is one of infinite variety, and in summer it is aglow with wildflowers of every hue. When I first entered the valley in mid-July of 1927, I thought surely I was entering a fairyland.
We know that for many hundreds of years the Indians came to this valley to hunt and fish, but not to stay. They left the land nearly untouched. Then in the early 1800s came the mountain men to harvest the beaver. And the valley became the favorite of one David Jackson, for whom it was named by his fur trade partner, William Sublette, in 1829, 100 years before Grand Teton National Park was established.
The first white settlers came to the hole about 1884, settling first in the southern part of the valley. Grass grew there and hay could be raised. Cattle could live there. But it was a demanding environment. The settlers worked hard all summer and battled cold and deep snow in winter, feeding their stock by horse-drawn sleigh or on snowshoes. Much could be written about their survival techniques, but what interests us here in connection with the national park is that the life they led nurtured a bold and independent spirit. They believed in their “first rights” to this part of the world, and resisted anything threatening their independence and proprietary feelings. Most of what is now the national park was part of Teton National Forest in 1929, and cattlemen had grazing rights on the forest. Naturally they were flamingly opposed to anything that might change their privileges. This was the human background for the long drama of saving a good portion of Jackson Hole in its natural state, for the benefit of untold generations of people from all over the world.
Author Mardy Murie and her late husband, Olaus, came to Jackson Hole for his now world famous elk studies. Her home base is still in Jackson Hole, although she travels across North America in the cause of conservation.
Teton country was a part of the West where, thankfully, gold was not an issue. An oldtimer once left this notice on a Snake River gravel bar:
Payin gold will never be found here
No matter how many men tries