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.
Carl McDaniel, 65, from Washington state suffered broken bones after he was charged by a 2,000lb (900kg) bull during a visit to Yellowstone with his grandson on Friday. The encounter was recorded by Mike MacLeod, a professional photographer, who said the animal was ‘agitated, pissed off and charging anything and everything’
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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