NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The Research Station's Place in History

The early communication links in northern Jackson Hole were hazardous because of the swampy nature of the country associated with the Snake River and Jackson Lake. The "Military Highway" identified the route taken by President Arthur's party and was later used as a road by early settlers. It forded the Buffalo Fork east of the present bridge on Highway 187 and followed the Snake River to the Oxbow. From there it climbed the hills east of the Jackson Lake Lodge, eventually following Jackson Lake and the upper Snake River to Yellowstone Park (Haynes 1942). Later a paved highway cut away from the old Military Road at the Oxbow and went to the Moran Cemetery on the hill north of the Station and then cut across the low area to Moran. The old Allen Road and freight road (a corduroy road) continued from the Oxbow straight to Doc Steele's Saloon, turned left to the Kimball Place (the Station site) and then to the town of Moran, linking the Whiteman and Grimmesey properties (Allen 1976). This road was improved by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in order to haul coal from Lava Creek to fire the boilers for steam power during the construction of Jackson Lake Dam (Lawrence 1977). Parts of these early routes were used as a stage road along the Snake River over which the mail was delivered from Jackson to Moran, the round trip taking 2 days (Gregory 1977). Ben Sheffield and Charlie Fesler built a cutoff road from Moran across the flats of Pilgrim, Second and Third Creeks called the "Swamp Road" which joined the Military Highway. One reason given for the construction was to route the tourists away from their competition, the early Jackson Lake Lodge. The road also continued across the Snake River from Moran via the Jackson Lake Dam, around Signal Mountain and across the Jenny Lake Flats (Lawrence 1977).

Beginning in 1910, most of the freight, housing material, food and supplies for the construction of Jackson Lake Dam were hauled over the Ashton-Moran Freight Line Road by wagon or sleigh with horse teams. The Line also supplied the ranchers in the Moran and Elk communities, the Teton Lodge, the Amoretti Inn and Charlie Fesler's store. This 75-mile road connected Ashton, Idaho, to Moran via the Snake River Ford north of Jackson Lake. "Finally on October 15, 1927, George Osborne Jr., and Charley Myers delivered the last loads of freight to Joe Markham at Moran. After 17 years of rain, mud, dust, thunderstorms, snowstorms, blizzards, avalanches, snowslides, and temperatures ranging from 63 degrees below zero in early February of 1915, to 100 degrees above The Ashton Idaho-Moran Wyoming Horse and Wagon Freight Line was terminated." (Markham 1972).

How to cross the Snake River was another problem. Harris-Dunn and Company, a gold mining concern operating on Whetstone Creek, built a ferry a few miles east of the Station site in 1895 (Fig. 6). They hauled their supplies from Idaho over Teton Pass and along the west side of the Snake River to the ferry. Ernest Conrad was put in charge of the ferry that bore his name which consisted of a square barge, moved with a winch and the current. When the Company went out of business in 1897, Conrad continued to operate the ferry for a short time (Mumey 1947). John Markham (1972) mentions that the first organized freighting into Jackson Hole was from Marysville, Idaho, to Whetstone Creek in 1888 to supply the placer gold activities in that region. Part of this route became the Ashton-Moran Freight Road or Reclamation Freight Road.

Also, toll bridges were used to cross the Snake River. One such bridge was built at Moran by Frank Lovell with the help of Herbert Whiteman and Ed Smith in 1902 (Fig. 11). Ben Sheffield continued to operate the toll bridge from 1903 until 1910 when the wooden dam at the outlet of Jackson Lake broke and swept away the bridge (Mumey 1947). Another toll bridge across the Buffalo Fork was built and operated by Noble Gregory's father and grandfather during the period 1900 to 1906. The location was about a mile east of the present entrance to the Park. The business was profitable only during high water, for travelers found the River fordable at other times (Gregory 1977).

Fig. 11. The Snake River bridge at Moran, Wyoming (W.C. Lawrence photo collection).

The "Cattle Bridge" crossing the Snake River east of the Research Station was built to facilitate movement of cattle from the pothole area to the Pilgrim Creek/Third Creek grazing allotment. Wilson Construction built the log and plank bridge in 1953. Cattle use of this bridge was discontinued in 1957 when the grazing operations shifted to the Elk Ranch.

Another form of transportation was a tugboat, "the Titanic", operated by Captain MacDermott to haul logs from the north end of Jackson Lake to the Dam around 1910. It ended its career by being docked at Pilgrim Creek. Lawrence (1977) recalled using it as a diving platform at that location.

The early settlers were able to supplement their income by working on the construction of the Jackson Lake Dam either as laborers or freighters. The first dam was a pole-crib dam completed in 1907, only to fail in 1910. A new cement dam was finished in 1911 and an enlargement and extension was completed in 1916, making the storage capacity in Jackson Lake 847,000 acre feet. S.C. Mahoney was the first superintendent of Jackson Lake Dam, 1913-1914, (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation 1977) and was killed on the job by a rock crusher at the construction site (Lawrence 1977).

The Oxbow of the Snake River was not always an oxbow. With the enlargement of the Dam, the river channel was deepened with dredges creating the present channel of the River across the Oxbow and the gravel banks across the River from the Station site. That work was completed in 1919.

The Moran Post Office was an important link to the outside world for the northern Jackson Hole settlers. In 1902, Maria Allen became the first postmaster, operating the service in the Elk Horn Hotel (the Charles Allen Place at the Oxbow) and naming it "Moran" after Thomas Moran, the artist (Lawrence 1977). (From Moran's small journal, it appears that Thomas, with his brother Peter, went with a military detachment to Teton Basin, Idaho, in 1879. Within a 12-day period, he made his field sketches which were the basis for his famous Teton paintings, spending only 1 day within the range itself (Fryxell 1943).) Josephine Roice remembers John Dudley Sargent, original homesteader at the AMK Ranch site (Fig. 12), who received mail at her grandparents' post office, and how frightened she was of him because of his wild appearance (Roice 1977).

Fig. 12. John Dudley Sargent's cabin (W.C. Lawrence photo collection).

Ben Sheffield and Herbert Whiteman moved the post office equipment by boat to the town of Moran (Mumey 1947) and Sheffield became postmaster in January 1907. Charles Fesler established the facility in his store and became postmaster in 1929. When his store burned down in 1950, a new cabin was built for the postal service. It was the last building to be removed from Moran when the mail service terminated in October 1957 (Lawrence 1977). A new Moran Post Office is now located near the Moran school at the Buffalo Fork Entrance to the Park.

All the settlers who have been mentioned previously, eventually sold their deeded lands to the Snake River Land Company in the early 1930's. According to the Teton County records and the Rockefeller records (Lamb 1978), the procedure for the purchase-transfer of these lands was uniformly the same: the Snake River Land Company in 1942 transferred the land by deed to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who in turn deeded the land as a gift to the Jackson Hole Preserve, Incorporated in 1945 and it, in turn, donated the lands to the United States in 1949.

In order to understand the aforementioned transactions and to provide a setting for the creation of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Park and Research Station, the following is a summary of the events that lead to the final transfer of the land to the National Park Service. In 1927, the Snake River Land Company was formed to purchase land in Jackson Hole in order to stop commercial exploitation and to preserve the region as a recreation area. John D. Rockefeller created a fund for the Company's land purchases. Harold Fabian was Vice President of the Company with R.E. Miller as the purchasing agent, who was later replaced by Richard Winger. In 1929, a portion of the Teton Range and the lakes at its base (excluding Jackson Lake) became Grand Teton National Park (Calkins 1973). President Roosevelt, by executive order, established the Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943 which included 32,117 acres purchased by the Rockefeller interests. There was much opposition to the executive order and a bill passed by Congress to abolish the Monument was pocket-vetoed by President Roosevelt. For several years, Congress cut off the appropriation of funds to administer the Monument. A compromise was reached in 1950, when Congress passed a bill abolishing the Monument and added the controversial area to Grand Teton National Park (Larson 1965). After some 20 years of trying to give these lands for addition to the Grant Teton National Park, Laurance S. Rockefeller, representing his father and Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc., officially donated title to the Federal government (Lamb 1978).