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The first known Euro-Americans visited Teton Valley in the fall of 1811
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Two hundred years ago, west-bound travelers crossed the mountains from Jackson Hole, entering Teton Valley. On October 5, 1811, this brigade of more than sixty men, along with one woman and two children, became the earliest verifiable Euro-Americans to visit this area. Although some people claim John Colter was the valley’s first Caucasian tourist in 1807–08, the evidence is unconvincing. William Clark’s contemporary map, drawn from discussions with Colter himself, indicates Colter never crossed the Tetons. Andrew Henry’s 1810 trapping brigade, often credited as the valley’s initial non-native guests, might qualify, since circumstantial support for that claim exists on Conant Creek. There, “Camp Henry Sept 1810” is inscribed on a rock still in place. Ultimately, though, documentation substantiating the presence of Colter or Henry’s men in Teton Basin does not exist.
However, Wilson Price Hunt’s 1810–11 journal attests to his delegation’s presence in the valley. Organized by American millionaire John Jacob Astor, the Pacific Fur Company had launched expeditions to the Columbia River. One group sailed from New York, arrived at their destination in March 1811, and built Fort Astoria. The second division went overland, led by twenty-seven-year-old Hunt. They left St. Louis in October 1810, establishing winter quarters on the Missouri River. Guide Pierre Dorion’s Indian wife, Marie, would become the first woman to cross the continent all the way from St. Louis to the Pacific—two young children in tow.
In spring 1811, Hunt continued upriver by keelboat. On May 26, as the party fought against the current, they met John Hoback and two other trappers, all of whom had been with Andrew Henry’s earlier contingent and were returning from the mountains. Hunt recruited them as guides and hunters. In North Dakota, Hunt abandoned the Missouri to travel overland. The eighty-two-horse caravan retraced most of the route over which Hoback and his east-bound companions had so recently come.
By mid-September, high in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains at Union Pass, they recognized the Tetons on the horizon. Hunt wrote
One of our hunters who had been on the banks of the Columbia pointed out three immense and snow-covered peaks which, he said, bordered a tributary of the river. (Ed: that tributary being the Snake River.)
In 1836, Washington Irving published Hunt’s Astoria adventure, penning the earliest printed reference to the Tetons:
All these matters were forgotten in the joy at seeing the first landmarks of the Columbia, that river which formed the bourne of the expedition … as they had been guiding points for many days, to Mr. Hunt, he gave them the name of the Pilot Knobs.
Descending from Union Pass to the Green River Valley, the party hunted buffalo and dried enough meat to last until they reached Henry’s abandoned camp farther west. Crisscrossing through Hoback Canyon, they were often forced up the rugged hillsides when riverbanks closed in. One loaded pack horse rolled “into the river from a height of nearly two hundred feet but was not hurt.”
At month’s end, the Astorians camped at Hoback Junction, confluence of the Hoback and Snake rivers. Hunt dispatched John Reed to explore the Snake River Canyon, but after two days, he:
… had been obliged to leave his horses which were of no help to him in climbing the mountains and crags. After an hour’s effort to get through on foot along the river banks he had been forced to abandon his attempt.
Hunt decided against following that route, though he recorded a tantalizing comment about the Snake River: “Americans call it the Mad River because of its swiftness.” Who these Americans were is unknown, although Henry’s men may have named this river during earlier trapping forays.
