Life on Wyoming’s Snake River

Growing up with my brothers, we would explore the side channels of the river. We fished for trout and waded in bare feet to the gravel bars. We learned the names of the different birds and the wildlife on the river—the beaver, otter, and muskrats. It was always a joy to see the pelicans fly up the river in the spring on their way to Yellowstone Lake. It was a sign that winter was over and no more ice was floating down the river. We don’t see pelicans there anymore.

My grandmother Evelyn was a Quaker from Philadelphia who in 1922 became a homesteader in Wyoming. With her teenage son, she settled on the banks of the Snake River in the middle of Jackson Hole. Her homestead was located about 30 miles from the headwaters of the wild and dangerous river. They lived in a small log cabin and started building a guest ranch. By the time I was born in 1936, the ranch had a few guest cabins and about a dozen horses for the guests to ride and to take pack trips into the mountains. I grew up in a cabin that my father built for his family. The homestead was built only fifteen feet from the bank of the Snake River. One of the strongest memories of my childhood was hearing the music of the river as it sped past our cabin. This is what put me to bed every night and gave me comfort to sleep. There is a certain kind of magic living by a powerful river. It creates a sense of awe and respect for the forces of nature. It also told me that some things don’t change, even though the river itself is always in a constant state of change.

After the Second World War, my perception of the Snake River began to change. In 1949, my youngest brother Harry, age 4, drowned in the river. He was wading in some shallow water, and the current swept him away. This accident destroyed my deep love of the river and made me fear deeper water. At the same time, the size of Grand Teton National Park was expanded, and our ranch became surrounded by it. The Snake River ceased being our private playground. We started to see for the first time people floating down the river in rubber rafts and many more people fishing in our private fishing holes. Our ranch once had a pavilion built over some of the river for our guests to enjoy, but it was taken down, and we lost a more intimate view of the water.

The family gradually moved away from the business of guest ranching to the tourist trade. We had 12 saddle horses, and in 1947, my dad never brought the horses back from their winter range and said he sold them. My mother was angry, as one of the horses was her own palomino that she loved. Where we kept our horses in summer was changed into an open-air chuckwagon restaurant that we still have today. Although my dad was raised as a Quaker, he often made up his own mind without telling us what he was going to do. This was perhaps the result of being exposed to the Western idea of independent thinking.

At the age of 14, after losing my little brother, I decided that the river was not for me anymore, and I started to seek solace in the mountains. The Teton Range became my playground as well as the place to meditate and seek comfort in nature. I found that the spirit moved me more being in the high, isolated environment of raw mountain rock. Something solid to hang onto, rather than the rush of an unpredictable river.

David Dornan is the clerk of Jackson Wyoming Friends Gathering. He is a retired Public Health Consultant and has worked in Southeast Asia as well as the state of Michigan. He recently gave up his life-long sport of mountain climbing.