Moulton Barn, Mormon Row

September 18th
The day got off to a good start by seeing a couple of moose at our favourite wildlife viewing area as we entered the park - see extra. We then continued on to do our hike along Taggart and Bradley lakes, two of the six glaciated lakes that lie at the foot of the Teton range. It was a great varied hike, a bit shorter than the last two days, offering beautiful reflections in the lakes, Fall colour, including a few sections of striking aspen trees, with their white/grey bark and their characteristic “quaking” yellow leaves, and fine views of the peaks. I have put a collage of our hike in extras. Having finished our hike we checked out a couple of viewpoints, the Oxbow, and the Snake River overlooks, on our way to our next destination for the day, Mormon Row.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, sent parties from the Salt Lake Valley to establish new communities and support their expanding population. Mormon homesteaders, who settled east of Blacktail Butte near the turn of the 19-century, clustered their farms to share labor and community, in contrast to the isolation typical of many western homesteads. These settlers first arrived in the 1890s from Idaho establishing a community (named Grovont by the U.S. Post Office) known today as “Mormon Row.” Homesteaders established 27 homesteads in the Grovont area because of relatively fertile soil, shelter from winds by Blacktail Butte and access to the Gros Ventre River. Two of the most striking features today are two picturesque barns. Settlers John and Thomas Alma (T.A.) Moulton built these barns on adjacent homesteads. In this same area we also saw quite a large herd of bison. Seeing the herd in front of the range of mountains was almost like being in an old western movie!