JACKSON, Wyo. — Jenny Lake, one of Grand Teton National Park’s (GTNP) iconic spots, is named for Jenny Leigh, a young Newe (Shoshone) woman.
According to GTNP, Leigh was born in 1849. She married Teton mountain man and trapper Richard ‘Beaver Dick’ Leigh around 14 to 16 years old, and the pair lived in Teton Valley, Idaho. The Wyoming Historical Society (WHS) writes on its website that, because there are no existing marriage records, Leigh’s Shoshone name is not known; Beaver Dick allegedly gave her the English name of Jenny. According to WHS, Beaver Dick wrote often and favorably of Leigh in his letters and journal entries.
Both Leigh and Beaver Dick assisted the Hayden Expedition of 1872, which resulted in the team naming Jenny Lake and Leigh Lake after them. It was allegedly the first time an expedition team broke tradition and named two natural landmarks after people who were not official members of the expedition, GTNP confirms.
According to Leigh’s cemetery marker in Idaho, which is on unnamed road near State Highway 33 outside of Rexburg, Idaho, she and her six children would accompany Beaver Dick on his hunting trips and expeditions into the mountains of what became Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and GTNP.
Leigh and all of her children died of smallpox in 1876, when she was 27.
“i [sic] am all alone and I [sic] keep doing at some thing from day light to dark every day. I [sic] am very lonsome [sic],” Beaver Dick expressed in a letter to a friend after Leigh’s death, which is shared by the National Park Service.
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