At the intersection of Antelope Flats road and Mormon Row road in Grand Teton National Park, there’s a sometimes overlooked stucco house, nestled amongst a row of aspens. Many of the locals simply refer to it as the “Peach House”. For 50¢, you can pick up one of the sheets with quite a bit of historical information about the area—commonly called Mormon Row. It was once a thriving Mormon community, going back to as early as 1896. The Peach House was built by John Moulton, who also built the barn just north of it. There are several additional outbuildings including a single seat outhouse. The shell is still there, but hopefully no one has used it in a long, long time.
Access to Mormon Row is very limited in the winter. After the elk hunt (Elk Reduction Program), the Park Service locks the gate at two places on Antelope Flats road. You can still walk, snow shoe, or cross-country ski into the area. I checked it once, and the distance from the west gate to the intersection is roughly 3/4 mile. From the other direction, it is quite a bit farther. The big caveat is the weather and the temps. To try to get early morning photos, you’d have to leave the vehicle about 30-40 minutes before the first light to get there on time and set up. Pre-sunrise temperatures during the winter can be -30° F. Normally, I wait until they plow the road and try to be one of the first people there, or go back after a fresh storm. This year, the Park Service did not plow the road at all, part of the sequester cuts. They didn’t open the road until it was bone dry.
The barns and homesteads at Mormon Row are only about 15 miles from home for me, so I end up there quite often. They make good foreground subjects to put in front of the Teton range. Some people say the barns on Mormon Row are the most photographed barns in the world. Over the years, I’ve photographed them in just about all kinds of weather and just about all kinds of light. I created a slideshow above to possibly give you some inspiration while in the Tetons. The area also works great for Panoramic images. The Peach House and the barns are in a lot of the Pano images on my site. Click Here!
The link below can supply you with a lot of additional historical information and a few more photos:
The Moulton Barn . com
