Greys River

About

Grey's River, Wyoming — 1812-1824 Fur Trade, 1880s-1910s Mining 1885 Etna Alpine, Bridger-Teton NF 65-mi. The river's character is set by its origins. Rising in the high country of the Wyoming Range, the Greys drains roughly 720 square miles of Lincoln County and gathers snowmelt off steep slopes before running south through the Salt Range country. That snowmelt is what the USGS measures at the Greys River Above Reservoir monitoring station, where the river's daily moods are logged for anyone watching the watershed. The average flow of about 654 cubic feet per second — and the historic figure near 700 cfs — reflects a stream fed by mountains rather than reservoirs, cold and clear and fast the length of its 60-odd miles.

Paddlers read the Greys in three parts. The Upper Greys is Class I through mountain meadow, an easy read of open water and grass banks. The Middle Greys tightens into a forested canyon, Class I–II, where the current picks up. The Lower Greys runs Class I through a wide valley down to the Snake. Across all three, the optimal range holds between 300 and 2,000 cfs — a broad window that keeps the river floatable through much of the season.

Human use of the valley runs deep. Before contact, the Greys River valley was a seasonal hunting ground for the Eastern Shoshone, who followed elk herds into the Salt Range each autumn. The river itself was named for fur trapper John Grey in the 1820s, and between 1812 and 1824 the corridor served as a major fur trade route. Mining defined the valley through the 1880s to the 1910s, and the towns of Etna and Alpine were founded along the river in 1885, anchoring the pioneer era.

The watershed's timber history is just as long. The Greys River drainage was logged from the 1830s through the 1920s, feeding a regional timber industry and the railroad expansion of the 1860s to 1910s. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators. That era closed as the old-growth stands were exhausted around 1910, state forestry conservation began in 1915, and state forests were established in the 1930s. Meanwhile the first hydrological studies arrived — USGS surveys of the 1870s to 1890s, gauging stations established from the 1880s to the 1910s, and later Clean Water Act assessments addressing more than a century of logging and agricultural impacts.

Today the Greys sits within the Bridger-Teton National Forest, and its remote character is not accidental. In 2012, conservation groups successfully challenged a proposal to pave the Greys River Road, preserving the valley's backcountry feel; the unpaved road still limits access and keeps crowds thin. The river supports the Alpine, Etna, and Thayne economies, largely as a trout-fishing destination — the same water that hosted the 1997 World Fly Fishing Championships. Outfitters such as Greys River Outfitters run backcountry float fishing here, working a river that remains, by design, hard to reach and worth the trip.