People Flock To National Parks On Reopening Day

Above, the Grand Tetons are reflected on the surface of Jackson Lake. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

This past week, the nation's national parks were reopened for visitors for the first time in weeks.

At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, long lines of vehicles waited hours for the gates to open last Monday.

According to the Wyoming Tribune:

JACKSON – By 11:53 a.m. Wednesday, Grand Teton National Park’s Moran entrance station was flowing with vehicles, a surprising sight on a grand opening day that was supposed to commence at noon. 

The park’s brand new Colter Bay district ranger, Craig Thexton, explained he made the call to swing the gates at 11:45 after people had been lined up for hours. 

By midday a line of “several hundred” vehicles were waiting, and the stationary caravan was spilling onto the highway. Same story at Moose: A line of cars, trucks and RVs extended past the Snake River bridge. The park let them through in both places to reduce congestion. 

Thexton is 11 weeks into the job working at Grand Teton, but eight of those weeks were while that national park, along with Yellowstone, was off-limits to the public. The cause of the closure was COVID-19, the deadly pandemic that derailed ordinary life for much of the world. 

Monday marked a step toward normality for Teton County’s two national parks, which opened all of their Wyoming gates at the request of gateway communities and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon. The parks abruptly went from empty to hosting an early summer-season type of crowd.

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