Moran: Named for a Painter Who Never Saw the Mountain

The tiny community of Moran takes its name from Mount Moran, the broad flat-topped peak you can see to the west across Jackson Lake. Mount Moran was named for the landscape painter Thomas Moran, who accompanied the Hayden Geological Survey into Yellowstone in eighteen seventy-one. His watercolors and sketches from that expedition helped persuade Congress to establish Yellowstone as the nation's first national park in eighteen seventy-two.

The painters and the senators agreed: the place was too magnificent to privatize. Yet it is unclear how much of the mountain that bears his name Thomas Moran ever actually saw. The early post office here was housed by the Allen family at their Elkhorn Hotel, and they named the community after the mountain they could see from their ranch.

So the painter, the peak, and this little waypoint are linked across time, even though the man himself never made the connection.