School kids love to snicker when they first learn that French trappers, a no-nonsense lot, named the Grand Tetons (“Big Teats” in English) for their resemblance to women’s breasts. But once the laughter subsides, they’re just as much in awe as anybody else at images of these soaring, sharply etched mountains.

Sooner or later, they and millions of other people make the long trip across the United States to see the Tetons for themselves. Most start their visit from Jackson Hole, the region’s main settlement and port of entry.

But Jackson Hole isn’t the best place to get a first impression of the Tetons. Even though the view that unfolds as you drive north from town soon enough presents the well-known profile of jagged peaks made so famous in the classic western, Shane, it’s also a view you’ll inevitably see anyway. There will be time enough to contemplate it as you explore the area.

A better way, because it lets you see an aspect of the Tetons that many people miss, is to drop down from Yellowstone National Park on the north. At Lizard Creek, the highway  doglegs east to skirt Jackson Lake, and as it does, opens up a vista of the Tetons from the side. What you see jolts you. The mountains jump up at an extreme angle, sloping away from the valley below like a Matrix character leaning back from a passing fusillade of bullets.

There’s probably no better an example of a fault-block mountain range in all of the Lower 48 states than what you can view here. Massive geologic forces lifted a 40-mile long block of granite and thrust it 6,000 feet upward over a valley.

By itself, the Tetons’ abrupt relief – there’s not a hint of foothills – would set them apart. But the chiseling actions of sun and ice have sculpted a silhouette of sharply notched peaks that look Alpine or Himalayan – unusual for the United States, where mountains typically take on more rounded shapes.

Like any superlative landscape, the Tetons force their beholders to look away periodically. Great beauty is not something the human mind is built to look at for hours at a time. There has to be a pause, a rest period in which you can contemplate and cherish what you’ve seen. My wife calls this rhythm “flex and relax,” much the way muscles work. Too much of one or the other is bad. Staring endlessly at the Tetons makes as much sense as not looking at them at all.

Plenty to do besides mountain-gaze 

Fortunately, Grand Teton National Park offers plenty of “relax,” for those times when you’re not admiring the mountains. The 484-square-mile park has several morainal lakes, products of ancient glacial scouring.

One of them, Jenny Lake, named after the Indian wife of an early 19^th-century trapper, is easily among the most beautiful mountain lakes in North America. It sits at the base of the Cathedral Group on its southwest side, three of the park’s most impressive mountains (Grand Teton, Owen and Teewinot), and Mt. St. John on its northwest flank. A dramatic cleft, Cascade Canyon, divides the Cathedral Group from Mt. St. John and affords a view deep into the lake-strewn, high-peaked heart of the Range.

Though it’s relatively small –Jenny’s only 2.5 miles long – the lake inspires deep emotions and even affection. There are few places on earth that have such a compelling meeting of water and mountain. If you’ve been to Lake Louise in Banff National Park in Alberta, you’ll know the like feeling of having a arrived at a perfect place.

The park is also almost the headwaters site of the Snake River, the Columbia River’s most formidable tributary, a 1,000-mile-long thread of high mountain and desert water. It starts just inside Yellowstone, works its way south beside the Tetons, and then dramatically curves north through Idaho as it seeks its rendezvous with the river Lewis and Clark boated down to make their fateful arrival at the Pacific.

As the Snake winds its way through the park’s conifer forests, in many places it meanders into marshes that give shelter to abundant bird life. This includes trumpeter swans, a rare species that has made its way back from the brink of extinction, thanks to the park’s powerful protections.

In 1983, before our first visit to the park, my wife and I had read that the trumpeter swan was one of its rarest sightings, and that many park devotees had visited Grand Teton year after year and had never seen one. So we were humbled and amazed the day we stopped to stretch our legs and stroll the shore of a small marsh. We were quietly talking and looking a stretch of reeds when we suddenly heard a raucous sound, like a jazz horn blaring out a deep note. Two furiously flapping figures, honking  away and skimming maybe 15 feet above the marsh passed straight over our heads: trumpeter swans. 

My wife and I lived on the glow from that for days afterwards. We still talk about it 20 years later as one of those clear moments when life provides a thrill far better than anything you can plan or buy.

The wildlife at Grand Teton is an extension of the abundant fauna in Yellowstone: elk, moose, bears – both brown and grizzly – fish, birds and small mammals. They’re all protected under federal law, and a belt of wilderness areas gives some added protection outside the park.

However, not all of the lands near the park are federal lands, so hunters can take down elk if they venture beyond protected boundaries. Jackson Hole, the valley that flanks the Teton Range, has been a major hunting and trapping ground since the last ice age, with French and American mountain men “discovering” it in the early 19^th century.

Threats to the region 

Though the pressure on wildlife isn’t as heavy now as it was before creation of the national park and nearby wilderness areas, threats to the region now come from population pressures. Jackson Hole, originally a pleasuring ground for the super-wealthy, such as the Rockefellers (who generously donated the lands that would later form the park’s core), has become a home away from home for the merely wealthy.

The Census Bureau ranks Jackson Hole’s Teton County (pop. 18,500) among the five wealthiest counties in the U.S. on a per-capita income basis (almost $69,000 in 1999). When you understand how far this part of Wyoming is from major U.S. population centers – 1,000 miles from San Francisco and 2,000 miles from the East Coast – this is an astonishing statistic.

What has created it is the spectacular rise in the number of estates and second homes built by celebrities and the rich. The small airport north of town routinely accommodates a steady stream of Learjets, Gulfstreams and Citations winging in from both coasts. The look of downtown Jackson Hole reflects the rising number of affluent residents – it’s possible to mistake some shopping stretches of this isolated town for Rodeo Drive or Union Square.

The “Aspenization” of Jackson Hole is, of course, driving out lower-income people and forcing them to commute ever greater distances from affordable suburbs. Whether local politicians have the experience or motivation to resist and control the development pressures exerted by the wealthy remains to be seen, especially as newcomers gain a majority share of the population.

In the meantime, Jackson Hole’s lodging ranges from motels and upscale timeshares to four-star resorts and dude ranches. Given the demands of its newer residents, who import their own tastes and standards, some of the restaurants here are as good as anything within a 500-mile radius.

For visitors who want to enjoy one of the finest – and last – of the big national park lodges, a stay at Jackson Lake Lodge in the heart of the park is worth it. The lodge, built in the early 1950s, is the last of the big lodges and an outstanding example of the clean lines so favored by architects of that era. Despite lacking the ornamentation of lodges like El Tovar at Grand Canyon or the Ahwanee in Yosemite, it has elegance in abundance and represents the uncannily good best taste of its era.

Its site is dramatic. The lodge stands atop a bluff that overlooks Jackson Lake and the entire profile of the Teton Range. The stretch between the lodge and the lake is a marshy lowland area, called Willow Flats, where visitors often sight moose and waterfowl. 

The architectural highlight of the 385-room resort (37 in the main building, 348 guest cottages) is the main building’s 60-foot windows on the west side of the upper lobby. The room, with it soft sofas, writing desks and reading lamps and chairs, is as comfortable and inviting a reading, schmoozing and viewing room as any in the national park system. The lodge is decorated with many Indian artifacts and carries a western theme throughout its furnishings, art and décor.

By Patrick Totty