Rockefeller and the secret land deals that created Grand Tetons National Park

Lisa Lednicer

The audacious plan was hatched in secret. In the 1920s, John D. Rockefeller Jr. – son of the Standard Oil founder, ardent conservationist and one of America’s richest men – agreed to surreptitiously acquire thousands of acres of breathtaking scenery around Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and donate them to the federal government for a national park. At the behest of Horace Albright, the future director of the National Park Service, Rockefeller formed a company called the Snake River Land Co. to buy up property around the Snake River. Rockefeller knew that if word got out that he was interested in acreage there, the price would skyrocket. “He was willing to pay fair market prices for the land, but not Rockefeller prices,” said park service spokesman Andrew White. The federal government had created several national parks in the early 20th century, White said, and the philanthropist “didn’t want the optics that this was the federal government coming in and taking more land.” The agents Rockefeller hired to do the buying told landowners only that they were representing someone who wanted the land for conservation purposes. It left locals thinking that perhaps the buyer was interested in expanding an elk preserve that had been created in 1913, said Robert Righter, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at El Paso and the author of “Crucible for Conservation: The Struggle for Grand Teton National Park.” But by 1930, a year after Congress had established Grand Teton National Park, word had gotten out about the purchases, and Wyoming residents were furious....Finally, in 1942, he wrote Interior Secretary Harold Ickes with a veiled threat to sell his holdings to the highest bidder if the federal government didn’t act. That got the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1943 used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create the Jackson Hole National Monument. A massive protest followed. At the height of World War II, Wyoming Sen. Edward Robertson declared it a “foul, sneaking Pearl Harbor blow.” A newspaper columnist compared Roosevelt’s action to Hitler’s annexation of Austria, according to the Wyoming Historical Society. In May 1943, local ranchers – led by Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery, a summer resident of the area – drove 550 cattle across the monument, challenging the National Park Service to stop them. They were allowed to proceed, but the incident got national attention. Congress passed a law abolishing the monument, but Roosevelt vetoed it. The state of Wyoming filed a lawsuit challenging the president’s use of the Antiquities Act, but it was dismissed...more