Teton Range

The sign's hinge is on this side of the range; the break is on the other. The Teton fault runs along the eastern foot of the mountains, facing Jackson Hole in Wyoming, and each slip on it has lifted the range and dropped the valley. From Teton Valley you see the back of that block, tilted westward toward Idaho: the long, gentler slope, with layers of old seabed rock lying on the crystalline core and dipping this way. On Mount Moran a cap of sandstone sits some 30,000 feet above the same layer buried under Jackson Hole.

What the plaque says

Teton Range Flanked by rock formations more than 2 1/2 billion years old, these 3 granite peaks rose up in less than 9 million years. Very new as mountains go, they are still rising. Hinged at the base of the ridge before you, a block of rock 40 miles long broke along a fault line, where the rock tipped up to become the top of the ridge. During the past 1/4 million years, extensive glacial ice sculptured these spectacular peaks from the hard, resistant granite. 315 Text prepared by the Idaho Academy of Science and the Idaho State Historical Society Marker made and installed by Idaho Transportation Department.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Teton Dam Site — 23 mi
  Geologists warned that the canyon walls would leak. The warnings were softened, the dam was finished, and it never held a full reservoir.
• Warm River — 25 mi
  Union Pacific built the Yellowstone Branch for tourists. At the bottom of this canyon it turned the engines that pushed them uphill.

More markers nearby

• John Colter — steps away
• Pierre's Hole — 7.5 mi
• Teton Flood — 22 mi
• The Three Tetons — 27 mi