Grand Teton National Park

When President U.S. Grant signed into law the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the locals didn't react by building motels right away. In fact, a lot of locals resented the federal land grab. And so when talk started about grabbing more land to preserve the Grand Tetons, the locals pretty much got up in arms.The Park Service's Horace Albright was run out of town when he showed up in Jackson Hole to talk about park expansion in 1919. The year after Roscoe Bartlett was born, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. started secretly buying up 35,000 acres to preserve it until the Park Service could act. Even after Congress formed the Grand Teton National Park in 1929, local opposition still precluded inclusion of the Rockefeller lands until 1949.

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