Jackson Hole Airport: Inside the Park

The airport you are near is the only commercial airport in the United States located entirely inside a national park. Jackson Hole Airport sits within Grand Teton National Park, a fact that has shaped its existence from the start.

The airstrip was established here in the nineteen thirties. In nineteen forty-three, the surrounding valley was declared a national monument, and when that monument merged with Grand Teton National Park in nineteen fifty, the airport found itself on protected land. The National Park Service began leasing the site to Teton County, and that arrangement has continued ever since.

Operating inside a park means strict environmental limits: a runway the Park Service has refused to lengthen and a ban on older, noisier aircraft. The Teton Range visible from every gate is not a backdrop. It is, legally speaking, your landlord.