Star Valley & Afton — The Elkhorn Arch, the Periodic Spring & Mormon Pioneer Country

An hour and a quarter south of Jackson, the Snake River canyon opens into Star Valley, a broad green basin ringed by the Salt River Range that Mormon settlers christened 'the Star Valley — the Star of all Valleys' when they arrived in the 1880s. This day trades the crowds of the national parks for the quiet heritage of a working ranching valley: Afton's world-record elkhorn arch spanning the main street, the rare and genuinely strange Periodic Spring that stops and starts on its own rhythm high in a side canyon, and the aviation and pioneer history of a town that once built its own airplanes. It is a day of small museums, big landscapes, and the tidy, chapel-dotted farmland of Wyoming's Mormon corner.