Wyoming
There’s A Secret Road From Idaho To Jackson, But You’ll Probably Need A Jeep
TETONIA, Idaho — There’s a secret route that people living in Idaho’s Teton Valley all know about as an alternate route over to the wealthy enclave of Jackson, Wyoming, to do their blue-collar work.
It’s called Reclamation Road, and some locals think it may be time to dust off — or grade with a heavy equipment scraper— this possible route for travel.
To get there, you have to drive 25 miles or so north of Tetonia, look for the Squirrel cemetery near Ashton, then head west on a dirt and gravel road. About half the trip to Ashton is possible at 70 mph. The rest goes about half those speeds — or slower.
But there’s no traffic. None. Only potato farms and silos.
The road is rough over the Teton mountains and dumps drivers on U.S. Route 191 a dozen or so miles north of Jackson.
Google maps doesn’t work very well in this part of the Potato Belt. But now that the main artery that connects Jackson with its working-class communities in Idaho is out of commission, no other alternative seems out of the question for consideration.
Tyler Hamilton, owner of WreckerBoyz Towing in Driggs, Idaho, won’t go up to Reclamation Road anymore to fetch anyone because they are “tourists and people with RVs, and the cell service isn’t great.”
Everyone in Idaho’s tiny Teton Valley communities knows about Reclamation Road.
“Reclamation is nicknamed ‘Jeep Trail’ because it’s a little rough in spots,” said Tetonia resident Jim Beard.
Even Jerry Anderson, the front desk clerk of Cobblestone Hotel & Suites in Victor — the first town outside of the Idaho and Wyoming border along Idaho State Route 33 — knows about Reclamation Road.
“I’m going up there on Friday to check it out,” said Anderson, whose hotel Tuesday lowered its $300-a-room charge to $220 to attract guests.
WYDOT’s Horse
The Wyoming Department of Transportation isn’t familiar with the Reclamation Road route because it is betting on a faster horse.
WYDOT’s alternative to a washed out Highway 22 over Teton Pass in Wyoming is the reason why everyone drives more than 100 miles along five highways of bumper-to-bumper traffic from Victor, Idaho, at the border with Wyoming to Jackson.
This alternative route was developed after the 30-minute drive to Jackson was taken away in a landslide from Idahoans, who are frustrated that their blue-collar pay is now complicated with a big commute.
Highway 22’s loss in Wyoming is a crushing blow to Idahoans.
Tourism is feeling the slowdown on the Idaho side of the border, and pocketbooks are feeling lighter with the extra money everyone is paying for gasoline at the pump.
In Tetonia, the Sinclair station was charging $3.54 for a gallon of unleaded gas.
“I miss having tourists around here,” said Erica Black, manager of the gas station.
This time of year had brought long lines to the gas station, but now a fill-up is quick-in, quick-out, she said.
Others are getting pinched financially by the fewer tourists in the valley as well.
“People living here have been impacted a lot by the Teton Pass closure,” said Zach Bennett, who runs the Teton Peaks Resort in Tetonia. “We’ve seen a lot of cancellations because everyone thinks there’s nothing to do here.”
Tempers also are beginning to flare.
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Idaho State Route 33 is the major thoroughfare that runs through the Potato Belt communities of Teutonia, Driggs and Victor. In the sign above, Idaho SR 32 is one of the roads that a driver would take in order to travel to Reclamation Road — still about another 25 miles away to the north. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) -
Jesse Fritsch, co-owner of Elements Building Specialties in Driggs, said she’s pushing a lot of work off because of the road being out to Jackson. “We’re definitely rescheduling things because of the landslide,” she said. “It’s added to our overall costs because we have to travel around the loop to get to Jackson.” (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) -
Jerry Anderson, the front desk clerk of Cobblestone Hotel & Suites in Victor, Idaho, plans a trip Friday to check out Reclamation Road, a secret route from the Idaho’s Teton Valley to Jackson, Wyoming. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
Crashing Gates
At the Idaho-Wyoming border, WYDOT traffic electrician Bryce Clements drove up from Cokeville, Wyoming, to repair the closure gates because an unidentified driver rammed them.
“This is not typical in the summer months,” Clements said.
Earlier in the day, he repaired a closure gate in Wilson, Wyoming, to the east of the landslide when a distracted driver talking on a cellphone hit the gate.
“I’m not sure what is going on,” he said. “This type of stuff happens in the winter.”
Sitting at a picnic table outside the Hot Diggity Dog food stand about a mile north of the Bennett’s Teton Peaks, a group of men were chewing the fat on the traffic mess.
Beard, Hank Hatch and Os Rigby wondered why WYDOT wasn’t helping out with the grading on the old Reclamation Road that runs up near Grassy Lake Dam in Wyoming by the southern boundary of Yellowstone National Park.
“Hell, yes,” said Beard when asked whether WYDOT should get involved with improving the road to help the Idaho communities.
Reclamation Road — named after its owner, the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages power and water in the U.S. West — is about a 30-minute drive north of Tetonia over a labyrinth of paved and fine-dirt roads to just north of a tiny community called Squirrel.
On the turnoff to Reclamation, there’s not much except for a dirt road, a collapsing wooden home from a bygone era and a silo.
“Over 25% of the people who live here, work there in Jackson,” Beard said. “No one can afford to live there, where people are paying a few thousands of dollars a month in rent.”
Thousands of people who work in Jackson but live in Idaho’s Teton Valley communities are seeing red over the extra driving time.
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Above from left, Os Rigby, Hank Hatch and Jim Beard, ate hamburgers at a picnic table outside the Hot Diggity Dog food stand in Tetonia, Idaho, chewing the fat on the traffic mess in the Teton Valley. They wondered why WYDOT wasn’t helping out with the grading on the old Reclamation Road that runs up near Grassy Lake Dam in Wyoming by the southern boundary of Yellowstone National Park. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) -
Jerry Anderson, the front desk clerk of Cobblestone Hotel & Suites in Victor, Idaho, plans a trip Friday to check out Reclamation Road, a secret route from the Idaho’s Teton Valley to Jackson, Wyoming. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) -
In Tetonia, Idaho, the Sinclair station was charging $3.54 for a gallon of unleaded gas. “I miss having tourists around here,” said Erica Black, manager of the gas station. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily) -
Tyler Hamilton, owner of WreckerBoyz Towing, is pulling his hair out in the traffic from Driggs to Jackson. He’s hauling cars back and forth between the two towns at a higher price because of the time and expense of gasoline he’s now spending on the 100-mile trip. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
Riding Buses
A START bus service run out of Jackson charges $16 for a roundtrip ticket to go from Driggs to Jackson, but that assumes an over two- to three-hour ride that begins at 5:10 a.m.
Commuters are arriving home as late as 8:30 p.m.
START Director Bruce Abel did not return phone calls seeking comment on the service.
Gale Luna, a START supervisor, said there’s been a small uptick in ridership on the buses this week that are taking about three hours to travel from Driggs to Jackson.
“Call volumes from commuters about the service have gone up about 50% since the weekend,” he said.
With the tourism season typically in full swing this time of year, some residents like the light traffic through the Potato Belt.
“Traffic is definitely down,” said Brett Johnson, a manager of Walters Produce Inc., a potato processing operation that runs a lot of 18-wheeled trucks carrying potatoes.
“Most of the traffic was due to tourism,” he said.
While the Potato Belt traffic along SR 33 is lighter than usual, the traffic picks up from Idaho Falls to Jackson.
Tow truck owner Hamilton is pulling his hair out in the traffic.
Traveling to Jackson wasn’t so bad when he left mid-morning Wednesday, but returning as the rush hour picked up around 3 p.m. took more than two-and-a-half hours, he said.
Related to the extra miles that he’s driving, Hamilton raised the price on towing a car from Driggs to Jackson from $375 to $525 with the same charge billed to customers who want cars hauled on a return trip.
“It’s my time and gas that I have to charge for,” Hamilton said.
Jesse Fritsch, co-owner of Elements Building Specialties in Driggs, said she’s pushing a lot of work off because of the road being out to Jackson.
Her business sells appliances to new construction builders near Jackson.
“We’re definitely rescheduling things because of the landslide,” she said. “It’s added to our overall costs because we have to travel around the loop to get to Jackson.”
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
Wyoming power plant booming with suspected UFO, drone sightings — but still no answers after over a year
Fleets of drones and suspected UFOs have been spotted hovering over a Wyoming power plant for more than a year, while a local sheriff’s department is still searching for clues.
Officials with the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office recorded scores of beaming, drone-like objects circling around the Red Desert and Jim Bridger Power Plant in Rock Springs over the last 13 months — though they didn’t specify how many, the Cowboy State Daily reported.
Sheriff John Grossnickle was one of the first to witness the spectacles, and last saw the mind-boggling formation on Dec. 12, his spokesperson Jason Mower told the outlet.
The fleets periodically congregate over the power plant in coordinated formations, Mower claimed.
The sheriff’s office hasn’t been able to recover any of the suspected UFOs, telling the outlet they’re too high to shoot down.
The law enforcement outpost’s exhaustive efforts to get to the truth haven’t yielded any results, even after Grossnickle enlisted help from Wyoming US Rep. Harriet Hageman — who Mower claimed saw the formation during a trip to the power plant.
Hageman could not be reached for comment.
“We’ve worked with everybody. We’ve done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers,” Mower said, according to the outlet.
At first, spooked locals bombarded the sheriff’s office with calls about the confounding aerial formations. Now, though, Mower said that people seem to have accepted it as “the new normal.”
Mower noted that the objects, which he interchangeably referred to as “drones” and “unidentified flying objects,” have yet to pose a danger to the public or cause any damage to the power plant itself.
“It’s like this phenomenon that continues to happen, but it’s not causing any, you know, issues that we have to deal with — other than the presence of them,” he told the outlet.
The spokesperson promised the sheriff’s office would “certainly act accordingly” if the drones pose an imminent harm.
Meanwhile, Niobrara County Sheriff Randy Starkey told the Cowboy State Daily that residents of his community also reported mystery drone sightings over Lance Creek — more than 300 miles from the Jim Bridger Power Plant — starting in late October 2024 and ending in early March.
Starkey said he’s “just glad they’re gone,” according to the outlet.
Drone sightings captured the nation’s attention last year when they were causing hysteria in sightings over New Jersey.
Just days into his second term, President Trump had to clarify that the drones were authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration to quell worries that they posed a national security threat.
Still, the public wasn’t convinced, but the mystery slowly faded as the sightings plummeted.
In October, though, an anonymous source with an unnamed military contractor told The Post that their company was responsible for the hysteria.
Much of Wyoming outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton also struggles with emergency response time.
By Katie Klingsporn, WyoFile
Wyoming’s U.S. Sen. John Barrasso is pushing legislation to upgrade emergency communications in national parks — a step he says would improve responses in far-flung areas of parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
“This bill improves the speed and accuracy of emergency responders in locating and assisting callers in need of emergency assistance,” Barrasso told members of the National Parks Subcommittee last week during a hearing on the bill. “These moments make a difference between visitors being able to receive quick care and continue their trip or facing more serious medical complications.”
The legislation directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to develop a plan to upgrade National Park Service 911 call centers with next-generation 911 technology.
Among other things, these upgrades would enable them to receive text messages, images and videos in addition to phone calls, enhancing their ability to respond to emergencies or rescues in the parks.
Each year, rangers and emergency services respond to a wide range of calls — from lost hikers to car accidents and grizzly maulings — in the Wyoming parks’ combined 2.5 million acres.
Outside park boundaries, the state’s emergency service providers also face steep challenges, namely achieving financial viability. Many patients, meantime, encounter a lack of uniformity and longer 911 response times in the state’s so-called frontier areas.
Improving the availability of ground ambulance services to respond to 911 calls is a major priority in Wyoming’s recent application for federal Rural Health Transformation Project funds.
Barrasso’s office did not respond to a WyoFile request for comment on the state’s broader EMS challenges by publication time.
The bill from the prominent Wyoming Republican, who serves as Senate Majority Whip, joined a slate of federal proposals the subcommittee considered last week. With other bills related to the official name of North America’s highest mountain, an extra park fee charged to international visitors, the health of a wild horse herd and the use of off-highway vehicles in Capitol Reef National Park, Barrasso’s “Making Parks Safer Act” was among the least controversial.
What’s in it
Barrasso brought the bipartisan act along with Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
The bill would equip national park 911 call centers with technological upgrades that would improve and streamline responses, Barrasso said. He noted that hundreds of millions of visitors stream into America’s national parks annually. That includes more than 8 million recreation visits to Wyoming’s national parks in 2024.
“Folks travel from across the world to enjoy the great American outdoors, and for many families, these memories last a lifetime,” he testified. “This is a bipartisan bill that ensures visitors who may need assistance can be reached in an accurate and timely manner.”
The Park Service supports Barrasso’s bill, Mike Caldwell, the agency’s associate director of park planning, facilities and lands, said during the hearing. It’s among several proposals that are “consistent with executive order 14314, ‘Making America Beautiful Again by Improving our National Parks,’” Caldwell said.
“These improvements are largely invisible to visitors, so they strengthen the emergency response without deterring the park’s natural beauty or history,” he said.
Other park issues
National parks have been a topic of contention since President Donald Trump included them in his DOGE efforts in early 2025. Since then, efforts to sell off federal land and strip park materials of historical information that casts a negative light on the country, along with a 43-day government shutdown, have continued to fuel debate over the proper management of America’s parks.
Several of these changes and issues came up during the recent National Parks Subcommittee hearing.
Among them was the recent announcement that resident fee-free dates will change in 2026. Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth will no longer be included in those days, but visitors won’t have to pay fees on new dates: Flag Day on June 14, which is Trump’s birthday and Oct. 27, Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday.
Conservation organizations and others decried those changes as regressive.
At the hearing, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), assured the room that “when this president is in the past, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth will not only have fee-free national park admission, they will occupy, again, incredible places of pride in our nation’s history.”
Improvements such as the new fee structure “put American families first,” according to the Department of the Interior. “These policies ensure that U.S. taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in an announcement.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
Wyoming
Evacuations spread from fires in South Dakota, Wyoming due to strong winds from coast-to-coast storm
CLIMATE TECH: As wildfires grow stronger, faster, and more expensive, a California-based startup is taking a high-tech approach to fight these fires using autonomous drones designed to extinguish flames before they turn deadly. Founder & CEO Stuart Landesberg joins FOX Weather to discuss Seneca’s firefighting drones.
Large, fast-moving fires are causing evacuations in South Dakota and Wyoming due to the impacts of a coast-to-coast storm.
The FOX Forecast Center said winds have been gusting up to 70 mph in the Pennington County, South Dakota area, which has caused the wildfire to spread rapidly.
COAST-TO-COAST STORM CAUSES TRAVEL ISSUES DUE TO HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS, HEAVY RAIN ACROSS NORTHWEST
The blaze, known as the Greyhound Fire, is approximately 200 acres in size. The fire is burning two to three miles south of Keystone and is moving east, according to the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.
The Greyhound Fire in South Dakota spans 200 acres.
(FOX Weather / FOX Weather)
Highway 40 and Playhouse Road are closed as crews work to contain the fire.
People living along the highway between Playhouse Road and Rushmore Ranch Road have been evacuated, officials said.
TWO KIDS WAITING FOR THE BUS CRITICALLY INJURED DUE TO STRONG WINDS IN IDAHO
Crews are asking anyone in an evacuation zone to leave the area. Officials are advising people in the area to check the Pennington County Public Safety Hub.
A grass fire has caused evacuations in the Winchester Hills section of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
(FOX Weather / FOX Weather)
People in the Winchester Hills area of Cheyenne, Wyoming, have also been evacuated due to a grass fire.
The FOX Forecast Center said winds are gusting up to 75 mph in the area.
The National Weather Service has issued a Fire Warning and says there is a shelter at South High School for evacuated residents.
Check for updates on this developing story.
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