Yellowstone to lure and impress tourists traveling to Yellowstone National Park and Old Faithful Inn. In addition to regular freight and passenger service, there were two special named trains, the Yellowstone Special and the Yellowstone Express, that ran to West Yellowstone in the summer tourist season. From Ashton north, the railroad was never plowed of snow, except in spring, so that Ashton became the wintertime rail terminus for the entire region. Development Beginning in 1910, Ashton was the railhead used for the construction of Jackson Lake Dam in Grand Teton National Park by the Bureau of Reclamation. For several years, materials and equipment were freighted by wagon from the Reclamation Building in Ashton to the dam site at Moran, Wyoming on what was known as the Ashton-Moran Road or Reclamation Road, as the locals called it, that ran over the north end of the Teton Range. Union Pacific then built the Teton Valley Branch railroad to Driggs and Victor from Ashton and completed in 1912. They built an engine house and other railroad facilities in Ashton to service the Teton Valley Branch and the Yellowstone Branch. These and further developments in the area soon made Ashton prosper and become one of the more important towns in Eastern Idaho. American Dog Derby Ashton, being at the head of the Snake River Plain and at the end of the Yellowstone moisture channel, has 20 inches of precipitation annually (according to usclimatedata.com). Not as much snow as the typical ski town in Colorado as Crested Butte gets over 40 inches in January alone (according to usclimatedata.com). See "Effects on Climate" in article "Snake River Plain"). Ashton was also the wintertime rail terminus for the region and where there was considerable development in the higher country north and east of Ashton, there arose a need for wintertime travel to the snowbound areas around Ashton. People began using the only wintertime transportation available at the time...dogsled. There became several accomplished mushers in the area whose livelihood became their dog teams. The many mushers, dog teams and their abilities were fun topics of conversation and it was not long before a race was organized that, by fate, would become the world-famous American Dog Derby. The legend goes that a few of the boys were socializing in the barbershop one quiet winter day when Jay Ball, a beloved Ashton businessman, hatched his idea of a dog race