Mormon Row is one of the most popular spots in Grand Teton National Park, so plans have been announced to enhance the area’s accessibility while retaining its historical tranquility.
The National Park Service (NPS) has added a Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) page to its website. This page discusses a series of planned improvements for Mormon Row, including a larger parking lot, native vegetation restoration, and new restrooms.
“When people go out to you to Mormon Row, they’re confused about why they’re out there,” said Grand Teton superintendent Chip Jenkins. “We're looking to make it worthy of the rest of Grand Teton National Park, where people can come out and spend a fair amount of time.”
Homestead Bound
Mormon Row is a series of homes built by Mormon families who settled Jackson Valley in the early 1900s.
The homesteads were empty by the 1960s, but the NPS preserved and continues to maintain many of the structures, including the iconic T.A. Moulton Barn and Andy Chambers Homestead, because of their significance to the area’s history.
The Moulton Barn became iconic after it was featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1957. With the Tetons as a perfectly picturesque backdrop, the barns are among Wyoming's most photographed and recognizable structures.
Visitors arriving at Mormon Row will find two small, unpaved parking lots, a vault toilet, and some wayside signage about the site’s history. The increasing number of visitors has led to unintended consequences, like soil and landscape damage, as people find places to park, walk, and find the best angle for photos.
That’s why Grand Teton National Park wants to improve the area. Mormon Row's allure has been steadily growing for decades, but the infrastructure isn’t designed to accommodate that volume of visitor traffic.
“We're all going to have to be taking more active efforts in managing visitation, because I think the trend line is clear,” Jenkins said.
Grand Teton National Park’s growing popularity with tourists means more visitors are taking in Wyoming’s picturesque Mormon Row. The National Park Service is planning upgrades to the area to keep up. (Getty Images) 
Grand Teton National Park’s growing popularity with tourists means more visitors are taking in Wyoming’s picturesque Mormon Row. The National Park Service is planning upgrades to the area to keep up. (Andrew Rossi, Cowboy State Daily) 
Grand Teton National Park’s growing popularity with tourists means more visitors are taking in Wyoming’s picturesque Mormon Row. The National Park Service is planning upgrades to the area to keep up. (Getty Images) 
Grand Teton National Park’s growing popularity with tourists means more visitors are taking in Wyoming’s picturesque Mormon Row. The National Park Service is planning upgrades to the area to keep up. (Getty Images)
Desired Conditions
The proposed changes at Mormon Row are modest, at least by NPS standards.
The list of desired site improvements includes a larger, centralized parking lot, new interpretive and wayfinding signs, distinct walking paths, and furnishings like benches, trash cans, and new restrooms.
There's also a proposed 0.75-mile trail extension connecting Mormon Trail Road to Antelope Flats Road. This trail will be open to foot and bicycle traffic, but no motorized vehicles.
“We’re also looking at installing a visitor contact station at Mormon Row,” Jenkins said, referencing a proposed 500 square foot structure for the Grand Teton Association to provide visitor information with an attached venue for sales.
These improvements will go hand in hand with an ecological restoration of Mormon Row. Native vegetation will be planted and damaged areas restored, and the new parking lot will be built further away from the historic homesteads to ensure the landscape and views remain as pristine as possible.
Hopefully, these improvements will be within the realm of “desired conditions” for Mormon Row and Grand Teton National Park. Jenkins said they want to maintain the experience of “stepping back in time” at Mormon Row while building better infrastructure so that the higher visitation has a smaller impact.
“We want to be able to host more visitation at Mormon Row, so we're looking at things we can be doing to help manage that visitation,” he said.
Micro-Management
Jenkins discussed these improvements alongside Cam Sholly, the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, during the National Parks Day lunch in Cody on May 5.
Both Jenkins and Sholly discussed the importance of pursuing “micro-geographic improvements” in Wyoming’s national parks. These projects are smaller in scale and budget but enhance the visitor experience by giving people more places to spend their time.
“We've taken a lot of micro-geographic actions to manage visitation in a bunch of different ways across both parks,” Sholly said. “Chip and I are in sync on this. It's important for us to understand that people are here for a reason. It’s a bucket-list trip for most, and we're giving them what they want.”
Jenkins discussed future projects that Grand Teton hopes to pursue within the next decade. Those include micro-geographic improvements to increase accessibility around Taggart Lake and a major renovation to restore some lost luster to Colter Bay.
“In the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, Colter Bay was the center of attention at Grand Teton,” he said. “We’d like to reestablish Colter Bay as a place where people want to go and hang out. That would be a major renovation we’re looking into five to 10 years from now.”
The timeline for improvements at Mormon Row isn’t so far-out. The NPS has already started some minor site improvements and hopes to start working on the modest enhancements listed on the PEPC page by 2026.
Investing In Visitor Experiences
Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are separate entities, but Jenkins and Sholly work together closely. The decisions and visitation at one park impact the other, and their decisions affect the communities throughout the Greater Yellowstone Region.
“In 2018, we did the biggest visitor use survey in the history of the National Park Service,” Sholly said. “We found that 70% of visitors are first-time visitors, and we had an 88% good to excellent visitor satisfaction rating. We replicated that survey last summer at the Canyon rims and the Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone, and our good-to-excellent visitor experience rating went up 10 points into the high 90s.”
Sholly said he and Jenkins are monitoring different areas in Yellowstone and Grand Teton to determine what micro-geographic improvements can be made.
These improvements are intended to keep people in the parks while spreading them out to reduce visitor volume at the most popular areas.
Any decisions on projects in Yellowstone and Grand Teton will be made with the input of stakeholders in the parks’ gateway communities.
“We've agreed from early on that we're not making unilateral decisions,” he said. “We socialize. We want to make sure we have conversations as far out as possible before implementing anything in either park that would alter visitation in the future.”
Jenkins said Grand Teton doesn’t have the same volume of visitors as Yellowstone, so it hasn’t had to respond to the same challenges as its northern neighbor.
However, as visitation increases, the need for improved infrastructure grows, which he and the NPS hope to address at Mormon Row within the next few years.
“Our roads work in Grand Teton,” he said. “We have very low traffic volumes, and the only time you run into traffic congestion is when there's an ephemeral bear jam. But the long-term trend continues to be clear: more and more people want to visit their public lands, and we need to accommodate that.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
