Beaver Dick

The sign's first wife is the part it passes over. Jenny, the Shoshone (Newe) woman Richard Leigh married in 1863, travelled with the 1872 Hayden survey with their children, and the survey named Jenny Lake for her. In December 1876 the family took in a woman whose husband had just died of smallpox. Within about two weeks Jenny and all six children, the youngest a newborn, were dead. Leigh survived, buried them where their cabin stood beside the Henrys Fork near Burton, and in 1879 married Susan Tadpole, a Bannock woman he had helped deliver sixteen years before.

What the plaque says

Beaver Dick This park is named for "Beaver Dick," a mountain man of late fur trade days, who lived on in this locality until 1899. He was born in England, and his real name was Richard Leigh. He came west as a trapper, but the real fur trade was already over. So he married a Shoshoni woman and stayed hereabouts. A popular early outfitter and guide, he served the famous Hayden surveying party in 1872: Leigh Lake in Grand Teton National Park is named for him, and Jenny Lake for his first wife. A picturesque character, he was widely known and liked. 273 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Menan Buttes — 4.0 mi
  Two volcanoes built where lava ran into the Snake River, and one of them open to walk around the rim.
• St. Anthony Sand Dunes — 10.0 mi
  Four hundred feet of white sand, open to machines most of the year and closed to people when the elk come down.
• Teton Dam Site — 19 mi
  Geologists warned that the canyon walls would leak. The warnings were softened, the dam was finished, and it never held a full reservoir.

More markers nearby

• Menan Buttes — 3.1 mi
• Brigham Young University-Idaho — 6.0 mi
• Fort Henry — 9.4 mi
• Market Lake — 14 mi