One year after Teton Pass collapse, community more connected, rebuild almost complete

People, politicos reflect on disaster as reconstruction nears completion.

JACKSON — Just a little more than one year after two mountain communities were severed by a catastrophic landslide, the page is about to turn completely.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation expects to complete the rebuild of Teton Pass and get drivers back on the rebuilt section of road in just two weeks. Local and state government officials, nonprofit partners and community members reflected this week about the impact of the landslide on the Teton area, what the communities learned from it, and how fragile and expensive infrastructure can be.

Teton County Commissioner Natalia Macker said it was a “good reminder that borders are arbitrary lines we’ve created.

“Our community is bigger than we might think,” she said. “We need each other.”

The Big Fill Slide took out a section of Teton Pass at milepost 12.8 on June 8, 2024, after signs of trouble the day before. A motorcyclist had hit a displaced pavement crack at the milepost and crashed into a guardrail, triggering a temporary closure while Wyoming Department of Transportation crews patched the problem. But before the road could be reopened for the morning commute, the highway was closed again due a pre-dawn mudslide farther down the road.

As heavy equipment mopped up the mudslide debris that morning, other crews worked higher up the mountain addressing the crack at milepost 12.8. WYDOT crews and contractors from Evans Construction were on site when the ground gave way and “catastrophically failed,” after a fast melting snowpack accelerated geologic movement.

No one was injured and no equipment was damaged, but the landslide sent Wydaho reeling into an emergency response. There was no way to know at the time how long it would take to build a detour to reopen the pass, or what thousands of commuters from Teton County, Idaho, their families, loved ones and businesses would do in the interim.

“It was hard because we had to get a hotel room here in Jackson,” Enrique Flores, a construction worker and Victor resident, said while pumping gas at Basecamp on Friday. “If you go all the way around, it was almost two hours and the traffic was horrible.”

A caravan of Victor, Driggs and Idaho Falls residents would drive 85 miles one way in the morning detouring through Swan Valley, Idaho and Alpine, and make the same trek back home in the evening. Traffic piled up in Snake River Canyon.

Flores got some relief staying with his construction crew in Jackson to work on a project last summer. But he left behind his wife and kids. After just two days, he said he’d already started missing his family, home and the food.

Flores said he doesn’t have the option of living on the other side of the pass, though.

“Jackson is just too expensive,” he said. “To get an apartment is more than $3,000. Even over here, it is expensive, but not like Jackson.”

Outpouring of support

While Flores was put up in his hotel by his employer, others had to find different ways to make it work. Some camped in the Gros Ventre while others traveled four to five hours daily to make sure they were home to tuck their kids into bed at night. But businesses, government, nonprofits and community members all stepped up to help carry the burden.

One22 gave out $250 stipends for gas or groceries and offered Temporary Emergency Relief for Commuters for more extensive needs like the cost of childcare, transportation, rent and other burdens associated with the pass closure. The Teton Valley Food Pantry passed out sandwiches and staple foods to families. The Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board approved a $60,000 funding request for START bus to provide free commuter services from Teton Valley and Star Valley. St. John’s Health provided a $120 stipend and lunch vouchers each day for any employee commuting around the pass. The Community Foundation of Jackson Hole matched 27 commuters with temporary housing in Teton County homes during the first week.

Those contributions represent only a sliver of the resources community members made available.

Laurie Andrews, president of the Community Foundation, said the response felt like a “muscle memory.” 

She said she remembered walking out onto her deck June 8 and calling all of the nonprofit partners to figure out what the next steps were. The playbook included communicating well, not duplicating efforts and immediately connecting with emergency services — all steps the community had taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and were now familiar.

“In the work of the housing initiative for the Community Foundation, a lot of it is proactively building collaboration, and not just in the face of emergency,” Wendy Martinez, housing solutions director, added. “We never know what’s going to happen.”

County Commissioner Macker said the pass closure was a forced and tangible example of how interdependent Teton Valley and Jackson Hole are between businesses, organizations, hospitals, families and schools. It’s more than stats on paper.

“It really drives home that these aren’t just the numbers from the housing study that we talked about in a meeting, but they are real people’s lives,” Macker said.

She said it is all the more reason that Teton County needs to focus on its transportation plan and invest in affordable housing needs. She said not everyone who works in Jackson will be able to live here, but it’s a goal.

“I also think it was a reminder of the fragility of our infrastructure across our country,” she said.

Cranking out construction

As community partners came together to take care of the people, the Wyoming Department of Transportation and state and federal officials were figuring out how to put the road back together. Some were concerned it might take months, but the pressure was on with the busy tourist season quickly approaching for Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

WYDOT and Evans Construction built a detour to connect Wydaho in just three weeks. The first drivers made their way over the pass on the afternoon of June 28.

“We learned that with the right people, the right materials and the right plan put together, we really can get things done quickly,” Bob Hammond, resident WYDOT engineer, said at milepost 12.8 on Thursday.

Hammond walked through the landslide rebuild site that is nearing completion. To finish the project, WYDOT plans to close the pass the weekend of June 20, reopening it for good the morning of June 23. He said the Snake River Bridge project is also scheduled to be finished before the start of the 4th of July.

“We had huge support from our leadership all the way up to the governor’s office,” Hammond said. “Our director had meetings with them every day during the emergency.”

He said one of the ways they were able to act so fast was by getting a contractor on board before the plans were completed.

If the state agency and the contractor can agree on the price, then it’s awarded as soon as possible to get the work done. Evans Construction of Jackson secured the detour construction and Ames Construction, a national contractor, started the complete rebuild in the same location as the slide.

“It was definitely a tough June,” Hammond said, who has lived in the valley for 30-plus years and saw the strain it put on everyone. “We understood that it’s really one larger community with a couple of mountains between us.”

Transportation infrastructure

The final price tag for both projects was $43 million, largely taken care of by federal emergency relief funds, according to WYDOT Director Darin Westby. He said the state will likely only have to pay for 10% of the total cost and Gov. Mark Gordon plans to use matching funds from his office to decrease WYDOT’s portion of the costs.

While movement at milepost 12.8 on the Teton Pass had been monitored by WYDOT for decades and there was no indication of possible failure at the time, transportation officials said the collapse further opened the door to consider whether projects and road maintenance are being hindered by funding deficits. 

Last year, WYDOT’s annual budget deficit was $400 million. Westby said the transportation agency addressed all major issues and kept roads as maintained and as safe as possible, but construction isn’t getting cheaper.

“That’s basically all we’ve been really working on for the last two years,” Westby said on Friday, “is how to position WYDOT better in line with the finances that we need to achieve. Working with the legislature and the governor’s office trying to ensure that people understand how important transportation is to their day-to-day lives.”

He said WYDOT was fortunate enough to get a $70 million annual budget increase through the redistribution of sales tax on vehicles or trailers. The budget for WYDOT right now is just shy of $900 million a year, with the state and federal government splitting the cost down the middle.They’ll see the extra funds in the fall of 2026, and Westby hopes inflation doesn’t consume most of that.

“We have to prioritize where those limited resource revenues are and where they get to go,” he said.

The final reflection Westby had a year out on the Big Fill Slide was how impressed he was with every partner that helped get WYDOT to the finish line, from public information officers to the U.S. Forest Service.

“Thanks to all the community and the grace that they’ve shown us,” he said.

This story was published on June 11, 2025.