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PrintA Place of Renewal
New Rockefeller Preserve enhances the family’s legacy of preservation in Grand Teton National Park
The 1,106-acre Rockefeller Preserve, with its minimal man-made intrusions, is the newest addition to Grand Teton National Park.
A stillness dominates the sagebrush flat on the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve. All is silent except for the rustling of leaves and the soft beating of goose wings on a small pond. The hubbub of Moose Junction seems far away.
If the wishes of Rockefeller, who passed away at age ninety-four in July 2004, stay the course, this newly added portion of Grand Teton National Park will remain like it is: serene and unspoiled, a “place of physical and spiritual renewal,” where one can contemplate nature and humankind’s role in protecting it.
Vague scars of upturned rock and soil reveal where buildings and roads once interrupted the landscape. According to local project director Clay James, workers removed seven miles of asphalt and hauled away the remains of thirty-one buildings in preparation for the preserve’s opening in the fall of 2007.
Now, with the exception of a modest visitor center, bathrooms, and a diminutive parking lot, the 1,106-acre former JY Ranch reverts back to its original residents: moose, that is, and bears, osprey, eagles, and coyotes.
“We’ve restored it to as near natural condition as we could realize,” James says.
The preserve’s designers kept the parking lot small in order to limit the number of people who could visit the site at any given time, thereby helping to maintain the sense of solitude. Grand Teton Superintendent Mary Gibson Scott said providing access to visitors, while preserving the area in its natural state, will require intensive management. “[The balance] will be a challenge to actually achieve,” she says. “That is the intent of the gift. There are high expectations.”
Even the visitor center’s architect, John Carney, downplays the building. The small structure isn’t the centerpiece, he argues; it merely augments the seven miles of professionally built trails that are the main attraction. The paths lead hikers through six different ecological zones—stream, boulder field, forest, wetland, meadow, and sagebrush—en route to Phelps Lake, where the Rockefeller family once cruised in a pair of wooden Chris-Craft motorboats.
Beginning behind the visitor center, the trail winds along Lake Creek until splitting at a bridge. From there, both forks cross the Moose-Wilson Road and head up to meet trails below the lake. Rockefeller requested that the first half mile of the trail be wheelchair accessible, complete with several seating areas and wooden platforms, all designed to give a greater number of people access to the creek.
Rockefeller hoped the preserve would help carry on the legacy of his father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., who over his lifetime was key to the very creation of Grand Teton National Park. “Father enjoyed being in locations of great natural beauty,” Laurance once said. “I shared his feel of the land and its beauty, and the personal joy of preserving and enhancing it. [How] we treat our land, how we build on it, how we act toward our air and water will, in the long run, tell what kind of people we really are.”
“I think it’s a tremendous gift from the family,” James says. “We want people to experience the land, to learn to be better stewards of the land.”
