Back When

Transportation, in its various forms, is a vital cog in the wheel of local economies, and much history of the West can be told through the tales of moving people and goods.

Case in point: I planned this story to be a straightforward retrospective of the Tetonia Club through the decades, highlighting its various proprietors, patrons, and parties. But then I stumbled across something as fascinating as it was unexpected.

In the Victor Fourth of July parade last summer, Nancy Beard Jardine sat proudly in the Teton County Farm Bureau float, waving and tossing candy to the kids jostling in the crowd. She had earned her spot in the public eye as the 2021
Farm Woman of the Year.    

The massive cottonwood trees lining the Teton River canyon bottom appeared stark and lifeless; the canyon edge above was blanketed with drifted snow.

The ingenious contraption known as the snowplane whirred into existence some eighty years ago on the Canadian prairies, land of long and windy winters.

Valley Pioneers Leave A Legacy Of Winter Fun. This article was originally published in the Winter 2000/2001 issue.

Could This Be The Man Whose Misspelled Name Has Become Synonymous With Southeastern Idaho?

The story goes that when “the Chambermaids” went before the county commissioners to propose that a county library be created, they were told that it was impossible and they should go home and do their dishes.

Hear the creak of breaking limbs; the pounding of trotting ponies being driven single file along the moonlight forest path…some say the trail is haunted

Victor Depot’s 100th birthday in 2013 is worthy of celebrating for the significant way the structure has served the community during its first one hundred years, as well as for the exciting plans in store for its future.

On an early summer’s day in 1810, a group of sixty-some men hiked up and over the Continental Divide at Raynolds Pass on the present Montana-Idaho border. A broad valley revealing a lake and a sizable river spread out before them, full of unexplored promise—and, the men hoped, far away from the Blackfeet.

It wasn’t a big day for wildlife sightings down by the Teton River. Midday in early January rarely is.

Here in the Rocky Mountain West—as elsewhere, no doubt—ski areas are often inexorably linked to either the founder of the resort’s ski school or a ski school director of unusually long tenure.

For more than eighty years, since its dedication in 1924, the Teton County Courthouse has been a structural stalwart of Main Street in Driggs, the county seat of Teton County, Idaho.

It’s not uncommon these days to hear residents joking about the town of “Drictor” running the length of the highway corridor between the valley’s two primary centers of residence and enterprise.

What’s in a name? When it comes to some Driggs street names, the answer is a rich reservoir of local history.

In the fields southwest of Driggs, a timeworn cabin sits off the Bates Road about a half mile east on 125 South and a hundred yards north. Few today realize this simple structure is steeped in western lore.

Though the train whistles can no longer be heard in Victor, the depot remains as a tangible reminder of the town’s past.

On April 15, 1909, James F. Blumer tightened the quoins, locked the chase, rolled on the ink, pulled the large lever, and printed Volume 1, Number 1 of the Teton Valley News.

During World War II, a total of 433 soldiers and sailors from Teton Valley were sent from this familiar place to many faraway places. Of the local men and four local women who served, fourteen were killed in action on Okinawa, at La Shima in the Ryukyu Islands, in Italy and Belgium, in Guam, and at Leyte in the Philippines.

“Git your little sage hens ready! Trot ’em out upon the floor! Tune up there you cusses! Steady! Lively now,—one couple more. Shorty, shed that old sombrero! Bronco, douse that cigarette! Stop that cussin,’ Cassinero! ’Fore the ladies—now all set.”

It all started with an enigmatic headline in the November 23, 1925 Teton Valley News: “There will be a meeting of Pea Growers at the Court House on Saturday, Nov. 25.” Pea growers? No one grew peas in Teton Valley in 1925.

Dozens of midwives facilitated births in pioneer-era Teton Valley. Alice Buxton graduated from an LDS nursing program in Salt Lake City before opening a maternity home in Driggs in 1918.

“I wish you could see it like I can,” says Teton Valley native Dove Piquet, closing her eyes to envision Sam, a coal-mining community nearly the size of modern-day Victor once wedged into Horseshoe Canyon in the Big Hole mountains.

Before day break, as the sky turned pink and the smell of dew-wet grass mingled with the rich aroma of unfiltered cowboy coffee, Lindsay Hatch rolled out of his bunk. As a sheep-camp jack in the mountains of Teton Valley in the early 1950s, he had to ensure that his uncle Sam Egbert, the herder he accompanied, was ready to move as soon as the sheep were.

Towering a mile above the sagebrush valley flats, a bald of granite, the Grand Teton, thrusts like a knife into the Wyoming sky.

Paul Petzoldt died in 1999, but his legacy of experiential teaching, outdoor adventuring, good judgment, self-reliance and wilderness stewardship gives his life resonance.

traveled some 300 miles on horseback from Malad to Teton Basin, accompanied by his neighbor Bob Tarter. They forded rivers with no bridges and crossed valleys with few trails to see about a murder in a cabin on Badger Creek.

The dam at Hidden Lake (aka Secret Lake and Skinny Dip Lake) was built in 1933, according to Dr. Grant Wilson of Alta, Wyoming, whose father T. Ross Wilson, engineered the structure.

On a recent journey through Montana, I met a woman who had lived in Idaho Falls 20 years ago. We got into a conversation about skiing, and she inquired about our local ski hill.

It must have been one of those Rocky Mountain “bluejay days” when William H. Jackson scribed those words, documenting the experience of being the first person to photograph the Grand Teton back in 1872.

Despite man’s best efforts, the rugged 18 miles between Victor, Idaho and Wilson, Wyoming, remain untamed, providing a sometimes tenuous link between communities and the past.

Shaped by its isolation, turn-of-the-century Teton Valley lagged behind the rest of the country.