The Grand Teton Reader

Grand Teton National Park draws more than three million visitors annually in search of wildlife, outdoor adventure, solitude, and inspiration. This collection of writings showcases the park’s natural and human histories through stories of drama and beauty, tragedy and triumph.

Editor Robert Righter has selected thirty-five contributors whose work takes readers from the Tetons’ geological origins to the time of Euro-American encroachment and the park’s politically tumultuous creation. Selections range from Laine Thom’s Shoshone legend of the Snake River and Owen Wister’s essay ‘Great God! I’ve Just Killed a Bear,’ to Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson’s humorous yet fearful account of crossing the Snake River, and William Owen’s first attempt to climb the Grand Teton. Conservationists, naturalists, and environmentalists are also represented: Terry Tempest Williams chronicles her multiyear encounter with her ‘Range of Memory,’ and Olaus and Mardy Murie recount the difficulties of ‘park-making’ in an often-hostile human environment.

Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the park’s wild beauty and controversial past will want to read these stories by people who lived it.