As three communities wrestle with destroyed mountain highway, leaders say residents primarily impacted; access is open to Yellowstone, Grand Teton parks.

By Angus M Thuermer Jr., Wyofile June 10, 2024

Teton County leaders declared Monday that Jackson Hole and Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks are open and accessible to visitors despite the destruction of a key regional highway.

A landslide Friday night severed the mountain-pass artery between Jackson Hole and Victor, Idaho, a vital commuter and commerce route that is one of five paved roads into the valley. As news of the landslide hit the nationwide press, worried prospective tourists peppered hospitality hosts, asking whether they could still come and reach the region’s recreational attractions.

“Jackson Hole is open,” Teton County Commission Chairman Luther Propst said during a hastily prepared briefing from a group of 10 emergency managers Monday morning. He led a discussion that included calls for aid to commuting workers across a spectrum of needs from housing to transportation, child care, carpooling and more.

Gov. Mark Gordon declared an emergency Saturday, enabling the state to seek Federal Highway Administration funds to repair the highway. The destruction of a segment of the road “endangers the health, safety, economy, and resources of residents of Wyoming” the declaration reads.

A detour around the destroyed section of highway could be fixed in “weeks, not months,” Darin Westby, director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, told the Teton County Board of County Commissioners over a broadcast link. That will be well into the region’s busy summer tourism season, which has already begun.

Fearful that news of the landslide would crimp the local and state economy, tourism officials and others urged a unified message saying the parks and valley are open and accessible.

Visitors from California, New York and Texas with vacation reservations have asked “will things still be accessible?” said Rick Howe, president and CEO of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

Other than the one route, the message to visitors is “we are not closed,” Howe told the county board. Considering that there are four other highways into the valley, visitors have options to get to Jackson Hole, he said, to enjoy the Snake River along with Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.

“The impact is a lot more on our community,” Howe told the board.
Temporary housing

Loss of the highway means commuters from the Idaho side of the Teton Range, where housing is cheaper than Jackson Hole, will have to drive an extra 62 miles. That adds 1 hour and 6 minutes to what is usually a 24-mile and 32-minute drive. Congestion will increase that time as thousands of commuters re-route their daily travel through Swan Valley, Alpine and the Snake River Canyon.

Fully 20% of the workers at St. John’s Health are affected commuters, hospital spokesperson Karen Connelly told commissioners Monday, and 115 of those “need to be on-site.” Many work 12-hour shifts and have pets, children and homes to worry about.

Adding what could be up to four hours of commuting time to such shifts creates obvious burdens, she said.

“These are long days for people,” she said. “There are needs.”
Additional response

Commissioners will meet Tuesday to take action on a host of recommendations made by emergency and community leaders, including reducing occupancy limits in some housing blocks, giving temporary occupancy permits to others, allowing RV and tent camping, waiving bus fees and other proposals.

“There’s a limit to how many people we’re allowed to put in our units,” said Mary Kate Buckley, president of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The ski-area company has constructed employee and workforce housing that’s regulated to some degree by development agreements with Teton County.

She asked for a temporary waiver of those occupancy limits and flexibility in other restrictions to accommodate commuters during the emergency. The resort also wants permission to house worker trailers, campers and tents at potential sites at a Teton Village parking lot and the Stilson transit hub a few miles south of the resort and village.

The Jackson Hole Community Foundation has reactivated its emergency fund that was last used during the COVID-19 emergency, said Laurie Andrews, president of the nonprofit hub. The foundation, best known for its annual Old Bill’s Fun Run for Charities that raises millions of dollars each fall for nonprofits, is setting up a network to pair unoccupied guest houses and vacant rooms with commuting workers, she said.

The town and county START public bus service has reworked its Idaho-Jackson schedule to accommodate the longer drive, director Bruce Abel told commissioners. Ridership on the first day of the new schedule was “somewhat disappointing,” he said, but that could change.

Congestion in the Snake River Canyon and Jackson during the emergency could extend the new, longer commute times, he said, because the highway network is “at capacity.”

The Federal Transit Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, reached out to START to offer aid, he said. START will carefully log expenses with the aim of securing reimbursements during the emergency, he said.

That reimbursement was “top of conversation” with the federal agency, Abel said. The federal outreach came as U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg expressed his agency’s support for Wyoming’s emergency repairs in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

Rich Ochs, the county’s emergency management coordinator, outlined the difference between emergencies and disasters and told the board that the governor’s emergency declaration was the proper and sufficient reaction. Being a Wyoming highway, the incident is the state’s to manage, he said, and the appropriate venue for aid is through the Federal Highway Administration, another arm of the USDOT.

It’s not appropriate to pursue Federal Emergency Management Agency support, Ochs said. “We have one injury,” he said, a motorcycle rider who was unseated by a slump in the highway some time before it collapsed. “We have no deaths … no direct impact” to town and county finances.

While WYDOT works on a solution — a paved two-lane bypass to the missing highway segment that will require motorists to slow down from normal speeds — Ochs and his eclectic 10-person team of department heads and community organization leaders will continue their efforts.

While costs may accrue to state and federal coffers, “the impacts,” he said, “are our problem.”