Cattleman's Bridge

The bridge outlasted its cattle drives and got one scene on screen. Delmer Daves brought his cast and crew to Jackson Hole at the end of June 1962 to film Spencer's Mountain, Earl Hamner Jr.'s novel of a poor family on a mountain in Virginia's Blue Ridge, moved west because Daves wanted taller peaks; Hamner himself said the budget wanted a location nearer Hollywood. Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara starred. It opened in May 1963, and nine years later Hamner's family went back to Virginia as television's Waltons.

What the plaque says

Cattleman's Bridge A long, narrow bridge made of wood planks once stretched across the Snake River at this point, and that bridge connected not just the bank on the opposite shore with this side, but actually connected the present with the past. Before modern Grand Teton National Park was created in 1950, many local people had fought proposals to expand the small national park established in 1929. Fearing the loss of grazing rights on public land, ranchers in particular had resisted the creation of a larger park. A small number of ranchers grazed their cattle west of the Snake River in the area of the Potholes, south of Signal Mountain, moving them to summer range east of the river, crossing on the dam at Jackson Lake near the town of Moran, now removed but then located just west of here. When the new, larger national park was created in 1950, two things happened. One was that, unlike other national parks, grazing was permitted during the life of the ranchers at the time. The other was that the new park received more visitors. Herding cattle across the dam became problematic so the National Park Service and the ranchers agreed to find an alternate place to cross the river, and this was the location. In the middle 1950s "Cattleman's Bridge" was constructed, but not long afterwards, the Potholes ceased to be used for grazing. So the bridge was used for cattle drives only a short while. The bridge remained, however, and was used in the following decades by people hiking or fishing. In 1962 the bridge even appeared prominently in one scene of the movie Spencer's Mountain. The bridge was finally taken down in 2001 after it had partially collapsed. While it existed, however, the bridge revealed one aspect of the distinctive history of Grand Teton National Park.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cunningham Cabin — 5.4 mi
  An 1888 dog-trot homestead cabin where a posse shot two men in 1893, and the valley decided not to talk about it.
• Mormon Row Historic District — 15 mi
  A Latter-day Saint farm village on Antelope Flats, its ditches still running and the Moulton barns still standing against the Tetons.
• Gros Ventre Slide — 16 mi
  The north face of Sheep Mountain fell into the river in 1925; the dam it made held two years, then emptied onto the town of Kelly.
• Murie Ranch — 16 mi
  The porch where the Wilderness Act was argued into being; Olaus Murie died a year before it passed, and Mardy kept going for forty more.

More markers nearby

• John Colter — 5.5 mi
• Trappers Monument — 6.6 mi
• Dick Turpin — 14 mi