Jackson to Yellowstone

You're passing through Jackson's town square, where four arches made from thousands of elk antlers mark each corner.

The National Elk Refuge stretches across 25,000 acres of valley floor just east of Jackson.

The Snake River you're crossing right now starts as a modest stream on the Yellowstone Plateau about sixty miles north of here, then travels over a thousand miles…

You're passing through Wilson, Wyoming, named for Nick Wilson, one of the more remarkable frontiersmen in the West.

You're crossing Teton Pass at 8,431 feet, one of the steepest highway passes in the Rocky Mountains.

You're descending the west side of the Teton Range right now, and the vegetation shift is obvious.

Victor sits in the heart of what fur trappers called Pierre's Hole, named for Iroquois trapper Pierre Tivanitagon who worked this valley in the early 1800s.

Right now you're driving over one of the most hazardous seismic faults in the Northern Rockies.

Tetonia got its name through bureaucratic rejection.

You've just turned onto Idaho 32, entering the Teton Scenic Byway corridor.

You're passing through Ashton, which for decades has been one of the most important seed potato producing areas in the entire United States.

You're near the junction with Idaho Highway 47, the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway, which leads to the last major undisturbed waterfalls in the entire Columbia River system.

You're crossing Henry's Fork of the Snake River, named for Andrew Henry, who in 1810 built the first American fur trading post west of the Continental Divide, just…

You're driving across the Ashton Flat, part of the eastern Snake River Plain, which is essentially a track left by the North American plate sliding southwest over the…

The open meadows visible along this stretch are Harriman State Park, sixteen thousand acres that were once the private Railroad Ranch of the Harriman family, who built…

Island Park holds an unusual record — it claims the longest Main Street in America, stretching roughly 33 miles along the very road you're driving.

The remarkably flat terrain you're driving through right now is the floor of the Henrys Fork Caldera, a volcanic crater roughly eighteen miles across that collapsed 1.3…

The forest pressing in on both sides of the road is almost entirely lodgepole pine, and that uniformity tells a story. Lodgepole pines are colonizers.

You're approaching Targhee Pass at 7,072 feet, one of the lowest crossings of the Continental Divide in the northern Rockies.

You're covering the final stretch before West Yellowstone, crossing terrain shaped by three distinct volcanic events over the past two million years.

West Yellowstone exists because of a single corporate decision.

The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center here in West Yellowstone is one of the few places where grizzly bears serve as product testers.

You're approaching the West Entrance, which handles more visitors than any of Yellowstone's four other gates — over a million vehicles in peak years.