WYOMING – What’s in a name? Most of the time, we give little thought to why things are called what they are. When referring to places in the Jackson Hole area, this is especially true.
Beginning with the most frequently asked question about our valley (What’s the difference between Jackson and Jackson Hole?) the logical follow up is: who’s this Jackson feller, anyway?
We thought it would be interesting to take a long trek down memory lane to track down name derivations that never caught on. Original names for places we now know by something different today.
The Tetons, the Snake River, even Jackson Hole itself were all known by another name at one time. What happened?
Naming places in the Rocky Mountain West often came about thanks to early trappers. In fact, after the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06, very little government-sponsored exploration of the West took place. It was these hardy individuals, in search for beaver, who became the first Anglo-European men to see and usually name what they ‘discovered.’
The Hoback River, Fontenelle and LaBarge creeks, Smiths Fork, Hams Fork, and Greys River were all named after early trappers.
Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole is a derivation of Jackson’s Hole, named for David “Davey” Jackson—an early trapper who was part of a fur company with William Sublette (hence that county’s name) and Jedediah Smith.
While Sublette often returned to St. Louis to export the beaver pelts and Smith preferred to wander more on his exploits, Jackson hunkered down for much of the 1820s and early 30s, and remained trapping primarily in the valley that would one day bear his name.
Jackson’s Hole is also thought to have received its name from famous outlaw Teton Jackson (Harvey P. Gleason, also known as Arthur Bradford) who reportedly stole horses for a living and had killed more than one man. It turn out Teton took his name from the valley rather than the other way around.
Noted photographer William Henry Jackson, who travelled with the famed Hayden party, also bears the same last name but it is merely coincidence. The valley early explorers simply called the “Big Hole” got its name in all likelihood from David Jackson the trapper.
Tetons
The rather vulgar name stemming from the French Trois Teton (or “three breasts”), the Tetons were originally known by more intuitive names. Granted, from the Idaho side, three prominent peaks do appear as a part of the female anatomy, particularly to men starved of that companionship for years at a time.
But the Shoshone referred to the mountain chain as “hoary-headed Fathers” and Teewinot, which translates to “many pinnacles.” The wayfinding mountains were also briefly known as the “Pilot Knobs” as a result of the British explorations of Scotsmen Alexander Ross and Donald Mackenzie in 1811. The mountains also went by “The Three Paps,” “Triple Snow Peaks,” and “Three Titans,” alternately.
Mackenzie’s journal of 1811 stated: “The most remarkable heights in any part of the great backbone of America are three elevated insular mountains, or peaks, which are seen at the distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The hunters very aptly designate them the Pilot Knobs. They are now generally known as the Three Paps or Tetons,’ and the source of the great Snake River is in their neighborhood.”
Just over the Tetons on the Idaho side, the area we now call Teton Basin or Teton Valley, was once known as Pierre’s Hole. It was the site of a huge trapper rendezvous in 1832. The basin was named for French-Iroquois trapper Pierre Tevanitagon who hunted the west slope of the Tetons in 1818.
Tevanitagon was killed in a bloody encounter with the Blackfeet Indians, leading to his name being immortalized for the high-mountain valley which was referred to by trappers as “Trou a Pierre.”
Finally, a few historians subscribe to the minority theory that the Tetons get their name from the Apsaalooke (Crow) Indians whose name for the mountains sounds very similar to “Teton” and translates to “pointed and jagged.”
Snake River
Many people are under the false impression the Snake River was named for its meandering, snakelike appearance from the air. But, lacking drones at the time, the waterway was considered no more winding than any other river, really.
No, what got the river its name was likely the all-too-common misinterpretation of Indian sign language. Upon meeting newcomers, the Shoshone, like most every native tribe in America, raised their right hand to signify it was empty, bearing no weapon, therefore their intentions were peaceful. This gesture was usually followed by a hand sign meant to identify themselves.
In the case of the Shoshone, it was a waving motion with the palm of the hand turned inward—probably to show they were the people from the land of the river that produced great fish, their main diet. Either early trappers mistook this waving motion to mean snake, or they were genuinely confused by the Shoshone’s penchant for indeed eating snakes.
At any rate, Snake stuck. That was probably a better option than the first name the river got. Wilson Price Hunt, and a party of men that included John Hoback, made their way from Dubois, Wyoming to Astoria, Oregon just a few years after Lewis and Clark’s expedition wrapped up.
Hoback left his name with the river of the same name, of course. Hunt, after tracking up the Hoback to its confluence with the Snake River, ordered his men to build canoes from available cottonwood trees as he had decided to float the Snake downriver.
Bad idea. Before long, the river showed Hunt its true character. The treacherous whitewater and narrow canyons of the river soon had Hunt cursing the river as “mad” and abandoning his boats for an overland trip to Fort Henry. Once in Idaho he tried the Snake again and found it worse. Mad, Mad River!
Yellowstone
Most historians believe John Colter was the first white man to make his way into what is now known as Yellowstone National Park. While Lewis & Clark just missed seeing it (they were too far north), Colter wandered into the area just a couple of years later as he guided and explored.
Colter’s tales of bubbling cauldrons of mud, spewing steam volcanoes shooting boiling water hundreds of feet in the air, and petrified trees had civilized folks referring to the place as “Colter’s Hell.” And so it was known for years until other French explorers noted the yellow rock walls of the river running through the area.
The French called it “La Roche Jaune,” or the River of Yellow Rock. It was that name that eventually defined the entire region of thermal activity we know today as Yellowstone.
How about Lake Eustis? Can’t find it on a map? Well, unless you are using select maps made from William Clark’s notes, you will be admittedly lost. Eustis Lake was someone in Washington, DC’s short-lived idea to rename Yellowstone Lake after James Madison’s Secretary of War, William Eustis, who died in 1813. It never stuck.
In 1826, a party of fur trappers that included Daniel Potts, Bill Sublette, and Jedediah Smith called Yellowstone Lake “Sublette Lake,” and some historians credit Sublette with discovering the lake.
The name Yellowstone Lake appears formally first in the 1839 maps of the Oregon Territory by US Army topographical engineer, Captain Washington Hood and has remained so since that time.
Equally lost to time is the name “Lake Biddle.” The lake was identified and mapped by Lewis and Clark and was perhaps changed in 1810 by the 17-year-old law student asked to edit the explorers’ original journals: Nicholas Biddle. To further complicate things, a later mapmaker in 1814 misread “Biddle” as “Riddle” but it wouldn’t matter. The lake is known today as Jackson Lake.
Green River
You can still find a few old-timers who call the Green River by its original name: “Seeds-kee-dee.” The Shoshone name means “Prairie Hen River.”
Some of the first explorers to the area also called the Green the Spanish River—probably for the early explorers Dominguez and Escalante who named the Green the “Rio de San Buenaventura.” Later, other Spaniard and Mexican explorers referred to the river as the Rio Verde, or Green River. This connection with the Spanish led to the Green being known for a time as the Spanish River.
But by the time Ashley floated the Green in 1825, the name “Green River” was in common use. Accounts vary as to why the river is called the Green. One has it that it is because of the color of the water; another that it is named for a member of Ashley’s original party of mountain men. John C. Fremont thought that the name came from the vegetation along the banks.
