The Grand Teton, Wyoming

Abstract

JOHN COLTER came to St. Louis in the spring of i8io in a small canoe from the headwaters of the Missouri River. He had journeyed 3000 miles in thirty days through a country infested with hostile Indian tribes. He described his solitary wanderings to Captain William Clark, who traced the route on a map which he was preparing to accompany the report of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Colter had been wandering through the unknown Rocky Mountain region since he had quitted the Lewis and Clark Expedition at the Mandan villages in I8o6. He had discovered what is now Yellowstone Park, and told tales of its geysers and boiling springs which few believed. His trail, as delineated by Clark, showed that he had approached very near to, if he had not actually visited, Jackson Hole and the Teton Range, and Colter has therefore been credited with their discovery. A year later a trapping expedition sighted the trio of snowy peaks of the Tetons and named them the Pilot Knobs. For a generation they proved a landmark for the roving trappers who journeyed over the Teton Pass or through Pierre's Hole in their annual trek to and from their trapping grounds. The Trois Tetons, as they later became known, have looked down upon many strange gatherings of buckskin-clad frontiersmen. They have seen some bloody battles between the trappers and the Blackfoot Indians, and now have to view the hordes of tourists scurrying to and from America's largest playground, the Yellowstone Park. Jackson Hole at the base of these mountains, and particularly the shore of Jackson Lake, was a favourite rendezvous for these early trappers. William Sublette in I828, after a long search through the mountains, finally found his trapper friend David Jackson encamped here. He named the place Jackson's Hole, and so it has been called in all the early trappers' journals. From the Hole the Teton Range presents a precipitous mountain front. Throughout its length of 40 miles it rises abruptly above the surrounding country. The Grand Teton, highest of the range, towers 7000 feet above the Hole to reach an altitude of 13,747 feet. The grandeur of these peaks is greatly enhanced by the absence of foothills and by contrast with the comparatively flat floor of Jackson Hole. The geology of the range has been examined by Mr. Fryxell, who describes it as a long block uplifted along its eastern margin and tilted westward. This uplift amounted to over Io,ooo feet and probably began in the middle of the Tertiary period. The contrast between the east and west side of the range is thus very marked. From the east, the Jackson Hole side, one views the precipitous side of the mountain block as it was exposed by the uplift. From the west, or Idaho side, is seen the broad top of the block gently sloping to the west. Along the edge of this tilted mass erosion is still very active, and each year routes in the range are found blocked by landslides. Jackson Hole, at the foot of the Tetons and about 20 miles west of the Continental Divide, is one of the most sequestered and severely enclosed basins in the Rocky Mountains surrounded on all sides by impressive mountain