Jenny Lake Overlook

Jenny Lake Overlook is a roadside viewpoint on the one-way Jenny Lake loop road, looking across the water toward Cascade Canyon. Keep it for a classic lake-and-Teton view without hiking to Inspiration Point. A short path toward the shore gives you another angle, and the overlook is listed as wheelchair accessible.

Parking in the wider Jenny Lake area is limited and fills in summer, though visitors report mixed luck at the overlook itself. Come early if this is a stop you care about. The road is one-way, so if you pass the turnout you may need to continue around the loop rather than backtrack. Restrooms, a general store, a ranger station and boat service are in the developed Jenny Lake area as separate stops.

From the viewpoint, Jenny Lake sits in front of the Teton Range and Cascade Canyon across the water. For a photo, leave enough lake in the foreground to show how the canyon meets the shore; a tight crop of the peaks loses the lake that makes this view distinctive.

Ice Age glaciers moved down the canyons, scooped depressions into the valley floor and left moraines that helped hold the water. Jenny Lake fills one of those glacial basins and reaches 256 feet at its deepest point.

Jenny Lake is named for Jenny Leigh, a Shoshone woman who helped the 1872 Hayden Survey with camp logistics alongside her husband Richard “Beaver Dick” Leigh, a British fur trapper who guided the expedition. The survey party named Leigh Lake for them as well. The Jenny Lake area has also drawn Indigenous visitors, fur trappers, survey parties, dude ranchers and generations of campers.