Jackson, Wyoming

Early Habitation

The earliest evidence of human presence in the Jackson Hole area is from at least 11,000 years ago. As the glaciers that had formed in the preceding 200 years began to recede, renewed vegetation brought more game and more animal and plant life to the region. Hunters followed, presumably over Teton pass at the south end of the basin. Throughout this early period, only small bands of hunters and gatherers came, periodically, to look for food and materials for tools. More roasting pits and teepee rings among archaeological ruins from 5,000 to 3,000 years ago indicate an increased presence of travelers in and out of the valley. During winter, it is thought, native hunters and gathers took various routes out of the valley to what became Idaho, the Green River, or the Bighorns in eastern Wyoming. Just before contact with Europeans, Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventres Indians had developed many routes through the valley and had even frequented the high stone masses above the valley floor. As Indian-built stone enclosures in the mountains testify, the peaks probably served as places of spiritual refuge before contact.

American Exploration

Whites came in waves to the Jackson Hole valley. John Colter may have visited Jackson Hole following his departure from the Lewis and Clark expedition. With his partner, Manuel Lisa, who had established a trading fort in the Bighorn Basin to the east of Jackson Hole, Colter took a winter trip from the Bighorn Basin, up the Shoshone river and possibly into the Tetons, to encourage Indian trade.

Evidence more firmly supports later commercial ventures into the valley, beginning with representatives of John Jacob Aster's American Fur Trade Company in 1811 and 1812. By the 1830s, the Tetons became important landmarks for trapping expeditions. One such early team included an Irish trapper by the name of Robert Campbell. After migrating to the United States, Campbell accompanied Jed Smith west to improve his health. He later joined Bill Sublette in supplying goods to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and moved to Saint Louis to become a wealthy merchant and banker. French Canadian trappers gave the Tetons their name when they traveled with the Northwest Company to Jackson Hole in 1819. Proof of ethnic diversity in the area's roots, these trapping expeditions tapered out by 1840 when the last trappers' rendezvous was held. The country went back to being primarily Indian hunting grounds between 1840 and 1871, when there were only six recorded white visits to Jackson Hole.

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