Grand Teton National Park is a United States National Park located in northwestern Wyoming, south of Yellowstone National Park. The park is named after Grand Teton, which at 13,770 feet , is the tallest mountain in the Teton Range.
The mountains were named by a French trapper who viewed them from the Idaho side of the range and called them t?tons, the French word for "nipples" or "teats" . It was established as a national park on February 26, 1929. The park covers 484 mi? of land and water.
There are nearly 200 miles of trails for hikers to enjoy in Grand Teton National Park.
Geography
The John Moulton Barn at the base of the Grand Tetons in Moose
Part of the Rocky Mountains, the north-south-trending Teton Range rises from the floor of Jackson Hole without any foothills along a 40 mile long by 7 to 9 miles wide active fault-block mountain front system. In addition to 13,770 ft high Grand Teton, another eight peaks are over 12,000 ft above sea level. Seven of these peaks between Avalanche and Cascade canyons make up the often-photographed Cathedral Group.
Map of Grand Teton park
Jackson Hole is a 55 mile long by 6 to 13 mile wide graben valley that has an average elevation of 6,800 ft with its lowest point near the south park boundary at 6350 ft . The valley sits east of the Teton Range and is vertically displaced downward 30,000 ft from corresponding rock layers in it, making the Teton Fault and its parallel twin on the east side of the valley normal faults with the Jackson Hole block being the hanging wall and the Teton Mountain block being the footwall. Grand Teton National Park contains the major part of both blocks. A great deal of erosion of the range and sediment filling the graben, however, yields a topographic relief of only up to 7,700 ft .
The glaciated range is composed of a series of horns and ar?tes separated by U-shaped valleys headed by cirques and ended by moraines, making the Tetons a textbook example of alpine topography
