John Muir once said, “The mountains are calling and I must go." From the moment I saw the Tetons the first time, I have felt this call. I also know that I am not alone. 2024 brought an estimated 3.5 MILLION visitors to Grand Teton National Park. This year, I even went twice once in June for my friend Janet’s memorial and then again in July to try to climb the Grand. I have been clomping up and down these paths for nearly 30 years. Gosh, I love the Tetons. It was my first National Park, and everywhere I go is ultimately compared with it. There is one place though that I will not be photographing there in 2026. The Mormon Row, which is famous for the TA Moulton and John Moulton Barns.

These barns - they are so beautiful. A trip to the Tetons almost always yields one or two trips to the barns. They provide a great photographic anchor on the landscape - both for sunrise and sunset. The fact that they and Sheep Mountain are some of the only really interesting things that you can see looking to the East gives them particular prominence in many of my images. These poor barns have been loved to death, and unfortunately, I have been a part of the problem. I have brought friends there. I have photographed couples and shot bridal parties on those grounds. Over time, I have continued to see more and more signs of the impact.

I was admittedly ambivalent about going there this year when I brought my friend and clim,bing partner, John there. Then, I fell in. Me and about $8,000 worth of camera gear took a tumble - not once, but twice. It was the second fall, at the Pink House with the Outhouse that when I tripped in the hole that I actually fell head first into the stream. Fortunately, it was only my feet that were ultimately soaked and muddy. I am very fortunate that John had not seen it as he probably would have video taped it and played it for all of his friends on Facebook.

I realize that I am making this mighty proclamation as someone who 'has my images.' I have a bunch of really solid photos from the Mormon Row that were taken over the course of 30 years. But that has come with a price. The evidence of heavy foot traffic is abundant, and the land has become profoundly degraded. It looks like textbook soil compaction and vegetation loss. The ground cover, which was made to handle wind, snow and grazing has just been destroyed by the army of well meaning boots that have gone over it. It leads to erosion, uneven surfaces and mud to rut cycles that make the area genuinely safe to walk. Sadly, it is a cumulation of human behavior that is rendered visible in the landscape.




Foot traffic physically degrades fragile landscapes
What you’re seeing at Mormon Row is textbook soil compaction and vegetation loss.
Repeated trampling destroys ground cover that evolved to handle wind, snow, and grazing—not thousands of boots.
Once the vegetation is gone, soil becomes compacted and loses its ability to absorb water.
That leads to erosion, uneven surfaces, and mud-to-rut cycles that make the area genuinely unsafe to walk.
In other words, the danger isn’t accidental — it’s cumulative human behavior rendered visible.

2. “Iconic spots” concentrate damage far beyond what the land can absorb
Parks don’t degrade evenly; they collapse at Instagram choke points.
Mormon Row is:
Flat
Easily accessible
Photogenic in every season
Repeated endlessly in social media and postcards
This creates what ecologists call visitor-use intensification:
A small area takes the impact of tens or hundreds of thousands of people while surrounding land remains relatively untouched.
The land wasn’t meant to be a stage — but it’s being treated like one.

3. Infrastructure lags behind popularity
National parks are chronically underfunded relative to their use.
That means:
Trails aren’t extended or rerouted fast enough
Protective barriers are avoided to preserve a “natural” look
Restoration work happens after damage becomes severe
So visitors are often placed in a paradox:
“Please don’t walk here — but also, there is no clear alternative path.”
Mormon Row feels treacherous now because the system reacted too late.

4. The myth of “harmless presence”
Many visitors believe:
“I’m just one person — my impact is negligible.”
But ecological damage doesn’t scale linearly.
The first 50 people do far more damage than the next 5,000
Once a path forms, everyone follows it
Informal trails become permanent scars
Good intentions don’t prevent harm when behavior is repeated at scale.

5. Wildlife stress is invisible — but real

Even when animals aren’t chased or fed, human presence alters behavior:
Birds abandon nests near heavily trafficked areas
Ungulates shift grazing patterns away from prime land
Predators avoid areas they once used effectively
Mormon Row looks pastoral, but constant human movement turns it into a disturbance corridor, not habitat.

6. Parks risk becoming theme parks rather than protected places

When visitation overwhelms stewardship:
Preservation yields to accommodation
Experience outweighs ecology
The land exists for us, not with us
Once that shift happens, the original mission of national parks — protection for future generations — quietly erodes.

7. Accessibility ≠ sustainability
This is the uncomfortable part.
Making places easy to reach does not make them safe to love.
Mormon Row’s accessibility is precisely why it’s suffering:
No physical difficulty filters visitors
No cost (beyond time) discourages volume
No barriers suggest limits
The land absorbs the consequence instead.

A fair but honest conclusion

National parks aren’t bad.
But unmanaged mass visitation is.

What you’re noticing isn’t nostalgia or elitism — it’s ecological reality: Some places are loved past the point of safety. The Mormon Row is now a visible example of that truth — uneven ground, damaged soil, and risk underfoot where the land once held itself together.