Menors Ferry Historic District

Menors Ferry Historic District is a self-guided walk of less than half a mile through Bill Menor’s homestead, just north of Moose. It’s an easy stop for a close look at how people crossed and settled Jackson Hole, and it pairs naturally with the nearby Chapel of the Transfiguration, a separate attraction. Turn off Teton Park Road about half a mile north of Moose. The district is listed as wheelchair accessible, though that label doesn’t tell you which building interiors are open.

The whitewashed cabin also housed Menor’s general store. A storage shed, smokehouse, Maud Noble’s cabin and a nearby barn with wagons and coaches fill out the historic district. The homestead once covered more ground, with barns, a blacksmith shop, a garden and irrigated hayfields and pastures. A restroom and interpretive exhibits are available in the district.

Menor built his cabin in stages: a west wing in 1894, a central kitchen and pantry around 1895, then the larger east wing around 1905 for the store. Settlers and travelers bought staples such as coffee, tea, sugar, flour and canned food there. The store, ferry and blacksmith work brought in cash alongside the farm.

The ferry and cableworks visitors see today are replicas. The original was a flat platform on two pontoons, held by a cable that stopped it drifting downstream but let it swing across the river. Turn the platform into the current and the Snake River’s flow pushed it toward the opposite bank. That made the crossing useful when high water made fords unreliable. A steel bridge built in 1927 ended the ferry’s role as a necessary crossing; one original pontoon remains beneath a riverside shed.

Menor arrived from Montana in 1894 and homesteaded beside the Snake. Maud Noble bought the property in 1918, moved her cabin there and ran the ferry and store with Frederick Sandell. In 1923, Noble’s cabin hosted local residents and Yellowstone superintendent Horace Albright as they discussed how to protect the valley from commercial development. That meeting became part of the effort to preserve Jackson Hole.

The district has a seasonal open period, generally from early April through late October. Individual buildings, the store and any living-history or ferry program may not be open whenever the grounds are accessible; visitors have encountered locked buildings. Check current access before making an interior visit the point of your stop. Current food service or a store menu could not be confirmed.