Watch Out For the Beef In Grand Teton National Park This Weekend

A cattle drive is coming to Grand Teton National Park this Saturday. NPS photo by Jackie Skaggs.

Make sure you know where the beef is if you're visiting Grand Teton National Park this weekend.

A cattle drive could snarl traffic a bit along U.S. 26/89/191 just south of Moran Junction as about 250 head of beef are driven from the Pinto Ranch of the Buffalo Valley to the elk Ranch Pastures, which are located south of Moran Junction and the Buffalo Fork River.

The cattle drive is scheduled for Saturday morning from roughly 7:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. When the cattle drive reaches Moran Junction, the animals will need to use the roadway to cross the Buffalo Fork Bridge. At this point, motorists will likely experience a delay of 30–40 minutes while cattle clear both the bridge itself and a swampy area just south of the bridge.

To avoid the temporary road delay during the cattle drive, you might want to take a slightly longer, but definitely more scenic, route south through the park by using the Teton Park Road between Jackson Lake Junction and Moose Junction.

Grand Teton National Park officials requested that the Pinto Ranch shift their cattle from their historic, free-range Pacific Creek grazing allotment north of Moran to the fenced Elk Ranch pastures so as to minimize potential conflicts with predators living in the Pacific Creek drainage.

Cattle drives and livestock grazing in Grand Teton are not unusual. In accordance with the 1950 Grand Teton National Park enabling legislation, certain historic grazing privileges were retained. Since that time, the fenced and irrigated Elk Ranch pastures have been used for cattle grazing.