The Grand Teton Reader

By Robert W. Righter

Grand Teton National Park draws more than three million visitors annually in search of wildlife, outdoor adventure, solitude, and inspiration. This collection of writings showcases the park’s natural and human histories through stories of drama and beauty, tragedy and triumph.
 
Editor Robert Righter has selected thirty-five contributors whose work takes readers from the Tetons’ geological origins to the time of Euro-American encroachment and the park’s politically tumultuous creation. Selections range from Laine Thom’s Shoshone legend of the Snake River and Owen Wister’s essay “Great God! I’ve Just Killed a Bear,” to Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson’s humorous yet fearful account of crossing the Snake River, and William Owen’s first attempt to climb the Grand Teton. Conservationists, naturalists, and environmentalists are also represented: Terry Tempest Williams chronicles her multiyear encounter with her “Range of Memory,” and Olaus and Mardy Murie recount the difficulties of “park-making” in an often-hostile human environment.

Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the park’s wild beauty and controversial past will want to read these stories by people who lived it.

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Robert W. Righter is professor emeritus at University of Texas, El Paso, and was professor of history at the University of Wyoming from 1973 to 1988. He is the author of Peaks, Politics, and Passion: Grand Teton National Park Comes of Age, among numerous others. Righter lives with his wife on the edge of Grand Teton National Park.

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Table of Contents:Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Coming into the Country
1. The Broken Earth: Why the Tetons Are Grand (2000)
Robert B. Smith and Lee J. Siegel
2. The Firstcomers (1978)
Robert B. Betts
3. The Origin of the Snake and Yellowstone Rivers (2018)
Laine Thom
4. Up the Winds, and over the Tetons (2012)
William F. Raynolds
5. The Ascent of Mount Hayden (1873)
Nathaniel Langford
6. Camps in the Teton Basin (1882)
William A. Baillie-Grohman
7. President Chester Arthur’s Journey through the Yellowstone National Park and Northwestern Wyoming (1883)
The Associated Press
 
Part II: The Proud Adventurers
8. The Shoshone (1910)
Elijah Nicholas Wilson 
9. Great God! I’ve Just Killed a Bear (1958)
Owen Wister
10. An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass (1892)
Theodore Roosevelt
11. A Summer on the Rockies (1898)
Major Sir Rose Lambert Price
12. One Never Tires of Gazing at the Grand Range (1884)
George Bird Grinnell
 
Part III: Seeing and Settling the Country
13. Outfit and Advice for The-Woman-Who-Goes-Hunting-With-Her-Husband (1900)
Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
14. The Diary of a Dude-Wrangler (1924)
Struthers Burt
15. Rivers, Ranches, and Reservations (1929)
Henry Van Dyke
16. Jackson Hole, Wyoming (1958)
Fanny Kemble Wister
17. Vital Laughter (1954)
Frances Judge
18. The Bet I Made with Uncle Sam (1989)
Joe Jones
19. A Woman’s Life in the Teton Country: Geraldine L. Lucas (1994)
Sherry L. Smith
 
Part IV: Preserving the Beauty
20. The Starving Elk of Wyoming (1911)
Stephen Leek
21. Valley in Discord (1965)
Margaret and Olaus Murie
22. Saving the Tetons (1978)
Margaret Sanborn
23. Postscript for a Park (1982)
Robert W. Righter
 
Part V: The Mountains
24. The Matterhorn of America (1892)
William O. Owen
25. Teton Clouds and Shadows (1938)
Fritiof Fryxell
26. The Song of the White Pelican (1996)
Jack Turner
27. At the Height (1993)
Pete Sinclair
28. “The Exum Ridge” and “Two Dogs Climb the Grand” (1998)
Glenn Exum
29. The Tetons (1984)
Elizabeth D. Woolsey
 
Part VI: Inspiration from the Park
30. For Everything There Is a Season (1994)
Frank C. Craighead Jr.
31. The Range of Memory (2005)
Terry Tempest Williams
32. “Antelope Dreaming,” “7 Stars for 7 Bears,” and “Cross Fire”
Lyn Dalebout
33. Spring (1995)
Bert Raynes
34. Jack Weber’s Cutthroat Advice Lasts Forever (2006)
Paul Bruun
35. Are We Paying Attention? (2006)
Todd Wilkinson
Grand Teton Timeline
Further Reading
Sources