This turnout on the right overlooks Elk Ranch Flats, the park's last operating irrigated cattle and hay ranch. Livestock, bison, elk and pronghorn share the fenced fields, so not every large animal here is wild. Late summer can bring bison bulls sparring on the flats.
Not everything out here is wild. Elk Ranch Flats Turnout is on your right just ahead, and you'll turn right again when you leave. Those fenced, irrigated fields are the park's last working cattle and hay ranch, with livestock grazing alongside bison, elk and pronghorn. When homesteaders came, this valley had no bison at all. Twenty arrived from Yellowstone in nineteen forty-eight, behind a fence near Moran. In the late nineteen sixties a small herd broke out, and then they found the feed set out for the elk. In August, bulls spar and bellow on these flats. Boone's got a tale for the next stretch.
Photo: Marshal Hedin / Wikimedia Commons / "Bison herd, Grand Teton NP" · CC BY-SA 2.0