The Three Tetons

The sign gives the French name first, but it was not the first. Shoshone (Newe) people, whose country this was, had names of their own; Teewinot, usually rendered many pinnacles, is the one most often cited. In 1811 Wilson Price Hunt's Astorians steered by the peaks while crossing Union Pass and called them the Pilot Knobs. The trappers' Trois Tetons, the sign's perhaps 1819, came later and won, fixed on Bonneville's map of 1837. From here, looking southeast, the three stand as those trappers saw them, shouldered close together on the skyline.

What the plaque says

The Three Tetons The giant peaks to the southeast were a famous early western landmark known to fur hunters and mountain men. Perhaps as early as 1819, French-speaking trappers were calling them the Trois Tetons -- the three breasts. More prosaic English speaking mountain men named them the Pilot Knobs, but the romantic French name stuck. This is one of the finest views of the peaks from the west, the side from which they were seen by the men who named them. 267 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Warm River — 7.2 mi
  Union Pacific built the Yellowstone Branch for tourists. At the bottom of this canyon it turned the engines that pushed them uphill.
• Mesa Falls — 8.6 mi
  The inn went up with a dam in mind. The dam never came, and the Henrys Fork still drops 114 feet untouched.
• Teton Dam Site — 14 mi
  Geologists warned that the canyon walls would leak. The warnings were softened, the dam was finished, and it never held a full reservoir.
• Harriman State Park — 16 mi
  The Harrimans would give Idaho their ranch only when Idaho had a parks department fit to run it. The state built one.

More markers nearby

• Volcanic Calderas — 5.7 mi
• Caldera Lookout — 13 mi
• Harriman State Park — 14 mi
• Teton Flood — 16 mi