A Tale of Two Towns, a Landslide, and a Disputed Origin

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anthony from Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

And I was calling in wondering about an expression.

Great. What is it?

The expression is won by a landslide.

And there’s people who talk around here about that coming from two different towns in this area that they were trying to develop and put money into.

And it seemed kind of like a convenient answer, like it came from around this area between Kelly and Jackson Hole.

They kind of wanted to get to the bottom if that’s just what they tell tourists, and I believe them, or if there’s something more to that.

Oh, I love these kinds of stories.

When I travel and I hear the local story from the tour guides, oh, this is the source of this word.

It comes from our town.

I never believe him.

It’s always wrong.

Do you know this story?

Do you know the story about supposedly why they claim wind by a landslide comes from that part of Wyoming?

So, yeah, supposedly.

The story I’ve heard was that there’s a lake, Live Lake, that’s out in Kelly in the Grovant Mountain Range, kind of right across from the Tetons.

There’s a big river that ran through there, the Grovant River.

And they decided to put a bunch of money into developing that because it made sense.

There was a main road there.

There was a river.

And then after the town bought a bunch of property, then a landslide happened and it dammed up the river, created this big lake and flooded this whole town.

So then they said, well, I guess Jackson it is instead of going to Kelly.

So then the expression was, well, Jackson won by a landslide, meaning like, I guess that’s their only alternative.

So that’s what people say is that that landslide caused Jackson to win funding and things like that.

Yeah. So the competition was which one would become the county seat of Teton County, right?

Would it be Kelly or Jackson?

Yes.

And Jackson won the county seat honor.

Yes.

And now that landslide, according to what I read, was huge.

This was 1927.

It was 50 million tons of rock, soil, and plants.

And it made Slide Lake.

So we’re talking a huge landslide that dammed the Grovant River.

It was massive.

And then that dam broke, and there was an 8-foot wall of water and a flood that just wiped Kelly basically off the map.

There’s still trees poking out of the top of the lake.

You can see the tops of pine trees in the lake.

So, yeah, in the slide you can see.

There’s a great description of it on the Wyoming Historical Society website if you want to look at that.

But, no, that is not the origin of one by a landslide.

And the main reason we know that is that the idea of a landslide as some kind of political victory or some kind of figurative victory between two opponents appears much earlier.

It appears in the 1850s, which is well before that took place.

So you were right to be suspicious.

Yeah, you were right to be suspicious.

In the geological sense, a landslide appears in the 1820s,

But there’s an earlier term which was used long before landslide, and that was land slip, and that goes back well into the 1600s.

Oh, okay.

Well, that’s great.

Well, thank you so much for answering my question.

I appreciate you guys looking into that.

Thanks for calling.

Our pleasure.

Thanks, Anthony.

Take care.

Okay.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

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