Email
PrintHistory on the Hoof
Embrace the past on this new Teton Pass footpath
(page 1 of 2)
People connect intimately with landscapes while hiking, and learning the history of an area further enriches the experience. A great place to do this locally is on a new—but at the same time very old—high-altitude trail beginning just fifteen minutes from Victor by car. The three-mile History Trail begins at the top of Teton Pass, elevation 8,431 feet, and winds eastward down the mountain, ending at the Trail Creek parking lot near Wilson.
Connecting Teton Valley and Jackson Hole, Teton Pass is an ancient passageway. American Indians threaded their way through the natural break between the Teton Range and the Snake River Range at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. Fur trappers used the route in the early 1800s in search of beaver, a time when Teton Valley carried the moniker “Pierre’s Hole.”
Beginning in the late 1880s, homesteaders endured toilsome, multi-day trips hauling their belongings over the pass; and, later, traveled west from Jackson Hole to Idaho towns for staples and supplies. Men braved life-threatening winter conditions with horse-drawn wagons or sleighs to bring freight and mail from Idaho to Jackson Hole. Wyoming cowboys trailed cattle over the steep switchbacks to Victor after the Oregon Short Line Railroad spur arrived there in 1912. For years, more than half of all cattle raised in Jackson Hole was driven over Teton Pass to the Victor railhead.
The Forest Service first graded what today is referred to as the Old Pass Road—now a paved hiking and biking trail—in 1913. It was widened in 1928 and used until 1969, when the present road was constructed.
Much of the credit for resurrecting the old wagon route, which lies to the south of both the current and old pass highways, goes to Wilson resident Doris B. Platts. The author of The Pass: Historic Teton Pass and Wilson, Wyoming, Doris had the foresight to search out and mark the old wagon road, keeping it alive throughout the 1990s. It was her dream to establish the History Trail, a vision that caught the attention of Bridger-Teton National Forest recreation manager and Teton Valley resident Linda Merigliano. Plans to restore the trail emerged soon thereafter.
