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Jackson Hole Airport is unique in its national park setting.
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It’s August 13, 2009, and I’m making my fourth trip to San Francisco in eight months. Why? To deal with my wedding gown.
Let me explain. I found the pickings slim in these parts for a gal to get her wedding gown, so I opted to purchase mine in a city that’s relatively easy to travel to from Jackson. I always take the same Delta flight: leave on a 1:05 p.m. jet, fly thirty or forty minutes to Salt Lake City, then hop a plane to California. I’m in Fog City by 6 p.m., just in time to dine at my favorite sushi restaurant. It’s so quick that I can work a half day at my job at the Jackson Hole News&Guide before leaving town.
The cost for this convenience? Usually about $300. But if I’d gotten married in, say, 1990 … well, let’s just say I probably would have driven to Idaho Falls and settled for getting a gown there. Alternatively, back then my Jackson-to-City-by-the-Bay itinerary would have looked something like this:
7 a.m. Take a turboprop to Salt Lake City.
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wait for a connection.
6 p.m. Arrive in San Francisco.
The cost for this inconvenience? Around $500. And no half day’s pay at work.
Even today, however, flying to and from the valley comes with its own set of unique circumstances. For one, Jackson Hole Airport is the only airport with regularly scheduled commercial service inside a national park. Because of its location within Grand Teton National Park, the runway length has been limited to 6,300 feet. That means only planes of a certain size, or carrying a certain load of passengers and baggage, can ferry people in and out of the valley. Add extreme weather and high elevation into the mix, and you’ll understand why passengers often find flights delayed or rerouted.
Still, aviation has come a long way since the development of the first airport here, an unpaved landing strip, in 1930.
“I’ve heard stories that the old-timers, clear back in the late 1920s, looked at several locations when they decided they were going to develop an airport,” recalls former airport manager and board member Carol Lewis. “The stories I heard were, they actually went out and licked their fingers [and held them up] to check the wind. That’s how they aligned the airport.”
Those old-timers determined that the only suitable place for an airport and runway was the location of the valley’s present airport, parallel to the Tetons north of Jackson. Of course, that was before the land was declared part of Grand Teton National Park.
