Grand Teton National Park United States

Legendary

The park was named after the tallest mountain in the Teton Range.

Photo by Stefan Serena

Kid Rating:

In 1927, a company called Snake River Land began quietly buying up ranches across the valley of Jackson Hole. Local ranchers had no idea the buyer was actually John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the richest men in the world, and that he intended to hand every acre to the federal government.

When word finally leaked in 1930, the valley erupted. Ranchers felt tricked by a wealthy outsider, and the argument dragged on for the better part of two decades before the land became part of the park.

People had been living here for at least 11,000 years by then. Eastern Shoshone families spent summers in the valley, and one group became known as the Tukudika for their reliance on bighorn sheep.

The fur trade arrived in the early 1800s. Beaver pelts were enormously valuable in Europe and on the East Coast, and between roughly 1810 and 1840 American, British, and French companies competed hard for control of the trapping grounds around Jackson Hole.

French-Canadian trappers gave the mountains their name, calling the three tallest peaks Les Trois Tétons. The tallest of the three, Grand Teton, rises 13,775 feet and gave the park its name.

These mountains are young by geological standards, less than ten million years old, which is why they look so sharp. There are no foothills either, so the peaks jump straight out of the valley floor more than 7,000 feet.

Congress created the park on February 26, 1929, but only protected the mountains and a thin strip of lakes at their base. Jackson Hole itself was left out, which was exactly the gap Rockefeller had been quietly filling.

His donated land finally joined the park in 1950. Today a road called the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway runs the ten miles north to Yellowstone, linking the two parks into one enormous protected landscape.

Drive to Oxbow Bend early in the morning, when the water goes still and the mountains reflect almost perfectly, and watch for moose along the banks. Hike around Jenny Lake or take the boat shuttle across to Hidden Falls. Stop at Mormon Row for the weathered barns that sit with the entire Teton range standing behind them.