Teton Range

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View from the east across the Snake River and Jackson Hole at the center of the Teton Range

The Teton Range is a mountain range on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. It extends about 100 km from north to south in the U.S. state of Wyoming to the border with Idaho. The two highest peaks in the chain are the Grand Teton at 4198 m and Mount Moran with 3842 m. The Grand Teton and seven of the ten highest peaks in the chain lie in a common mountain stick between the valleys of Cascade Canyon and Death Canyon, which is informally referred to as the Cathedral Group. In this mountain floor there are also half of the remaining glaciers in the Teton Range, including the Teton Glacier is the largest glacier in the mountain chain.

The name comes from Teton early French-born fur traders, who called the Grand Teton because of its shape when viewed from the north to a female breast (French Téton ).

Geology

The Teton Range is the most striking and geologically youngest range of the Rocky Mountains. It forms the sharp transition between the prairies of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. The bedrock of Tetonkette, as well as the adjacent part of the Rocky Mountains, consists of metamorphic gneiss, which is developed in geologically long periods under pressure from sediments of an ancient sea. In cracks and crevices of the rock occasionally penetrated magma and solidified in corridors to granite.

Plate tectonic processes unfolded in front of about 80-40 million years ago on both American continents through the mountain range of the Cordillera, whose part of the Rocky Mountains. The thereby acting fracture and shear forces worked long after, and together with the erosion forces to a thinning of the crust.

Prior to 13-9 million years ago in the development of the Basin and Range Province and the Teton Fault in North-South direction. On the western side of the fracture crustal block was tilted up, it is the present day Tetonkette with its steep eastern and gentle west flank. The eastern part of the crustal block sagged, however, and today forms the valley of Jackson Hole. The difference in height between the raised peaks and the valley floor was originally about 10000-11000 meters. The continued acting erosion reduced the height of the Teton Range and uncovered the harder granite, whose sharp edges are as typical of the major peaks. The removed material -filled Jackson Hole partially. Today there are 2100 m between the top of the Grand Tetons and the valley floor. The geological age of the low mountain range explains the jagged shapes and steep U-shaped valleys in the mountain range. The erosion had not yet even grind to rock this much time and wash out the valleys.

The layer immediately below the mountains in Jackson Hole was washed out towards the end of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, at the same time the moraines were deposited, now structure the plane. The course of the Snake River and the lakes in Jackson Hole originated about 15,000 years ago.

Geography

The Teton Range extends in a north-south direction. It will be continued to the south of the Salt River Range. To the southwest, close to the small Big Hole Mountains and determine the course of the Snake River, which accompanied immediately below the eastern flank of the Teton Range in full length the chain, then turns to the west and northwest, and so includes the mountain range to about 3/4. To the east is Jackson Hole, in the west the valley of the Teton River.

In the Teton Range rise no major rivers. All rainfall drain the Snake River; directly from the east side, from the western side on the Teton River and Henry's Fork in Idaho.

Almost the entire eastern flank of the Teton Range and the west of Jackson Hole are now part of Grand Teton National Park, the western flank of the Targhee National Forest, a national forest. In the Targhee National Forest are two Wilderness Areas: The after the trappers and mountain man Jedediah Smith named Jedediah Smith Wilderness and in the north the small Winegar Hole Wilderness. Both are like all Wilderness Areas protected areas in the strictest class in the United States without any human influence. In the southeast of Bridger - Teton National Forest covers a small part of the mountain range.

In the south of Tetonkette the Jackson Hole Ski Area, one of the largest and most famous ski resorts in the United States. Another ski resort called Grand Targhee Resort is located in the southwest.

Teton Range as a name

The Teton Range is eponymous for the genus Tetonius to the one four extinct primate species from the family Omomyidae counts, which were common in the Eocene in North America. The finds are from 55.8 to 48.6 million years old. Many North American primates of the family Omomyidae are named after different kinds of geographical barriers - especially after mountain ranges and rivers - may be responsible for their diversity. An almost complete skull of the type Tetonius homunculus was discovered in the western part of the Teton Range in the late 19th century by the paleontologists Jacob L. Wortman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and described by Edward Drinker Cope scientifically.