VICTOR — Someone wrote "Stop or All Will Be Targeted" on the door of a small building going up in the Canyon Wren subdivision in late September and signed the siding beside it Open Space Alliance. The letters O, S and A run across the top, and under each one the rest of the word runs down the wall.
By Oct. 6, warnings had turned up at three more subdivisions near Victor, painted on the road at each entrance. Two began "Next if." The third, at Lucy Meadows, carried the same "OSA" signature as Canyon Wren.
Canyon Wren is eight lots of 2.5 acres each in unincorporated Teton County, platted in 2022 on what had been farmland. Photos taken Sept. 28 show "STOP" written down a poured foundation wall, with X marks on either side. The small building, on another lot where construction is underway, has "LAST Warning" and "OSA" on one wall and "FARM Field," underlined, beside a window. A Case excavator on the site reads "U Have Been Warned" on its side panel, "Stop" on the cab glass and, on its counterweight, "DONT Push us," the first word traced over the white Case logo.
Whoever left the messages brought three materials. The building and the foundation were marked in chalk, and the excavator in shaving cream. Both wash off. The only spray paint went on the paved roads.
At Basin Meadows, across the street from Canyon Wren, red paint on the pavement at the entrance reads "Next if." It was there Sept. 28 and was still there Oct. 14, near a sign marking the gravel entrance road as private.
Farther down the road toward Lucy Meadows, "Next if contines," misspelled, was painted at the entrance to Moose Hollow Estates. By Oct. 14 someone had covered it over.
Lucy Meadows, platted in 2023, was the last of the four to be found. A real estate agent came across the markings Oct. 6, on fresh asphalt at the Garcia Street entrance: "Warned" and "OSA," and under the stop sign, "Next if it goes on." Beside them someone painted "#3" and a circled smiley face. When its entrance was painted is unknown.
The messages left on private property went on the work itself: a foundation, a building going up, the machine digging the lots. The road warnings promised more if the work went on.
