Town of Jackson by Teton Media Works, Inc.

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HAPPY 100 YEARS, JACKSON!

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CONTENTS

Dancing outside the Wort Hotel, circa 1970s. JACKSON HOLE NEWS&GUIDE FILE

FEATURES 24 Hidden history

A century of development has altered the face of Jackson, but remnants of the town’s roughand-tumble past are often hidden in plain sight.

30 The Wort

PEOPLE

Three skiers, a climber and a snowboarder are stars in Jackson’s sports firmament.

1914 JACKSON HOLE COURIER

Harry Clissold, Jackson’s mayor for three decades, knew how to get things done, whether it was plowing Teton Pass or building an airport in a national park. 1914-2014

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55 National Elk Refuge

The reserve helped shape Jackson’s borders and the community’s ethos.

48 Old news

58 Kelly v. Jackson

PLACES

TIMELINE

16 The mayor who could

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The story of how a 19th century fur trader’s name was bestowed to the town.

19 Homegrown athletes

An all-female town government earned Jackson a place in the history books in 1920.

JACKSON CENTENNIAL

A tour in images shows the extent of change Jackson has undergone in a century.

45 Davey Jackson

Some folks thought the idea of a new luxury hotel in bucolic 1940’s Jackson was crazy. The establishment turned out to be much more than just a tourist draw.

12 Petticoat rulers

36 Photos, then and now

Headlines from 1914 depict the hardy frontier life led by early Jacksonites.

51 Bars

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Saloons were a big part of life long before Jackson was incorporated in 1914.

Jackson’s one-time rival sought the county seat, was nearly wiped out by flood.

64 Jackson through the years

ON THE COVER: Blended photo of Jackson circa 1930s and today, looking up Cache Creek. BRADLY J. BONER AND JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Happy 100th Anniversary Town of Jackson! BomberBryan.com ...Real Estate Intelligence for the next 100 years

T. Bomber Bryan, Owner, Associate Broker, GRI 80 W. Broadway, Jackson, WY | 307.690.2295

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group of disparate settlers voted 100 years ago to officially form the town of Jackson. The proposition passed 48 to 21. Staff at the Jackson’s Hole Courier made note of the decision in the Sept. 24, 1914, edition of the newspaper with a one-paragraph story buried on the front page below articles about happenings elsewhere in the valley. “Coyotes or chicken thieves (we are not quite sure yet) have been appeasing their appetites in this neck o’ the woods,” reads one report from Aspen Ridge. “The Newbirds and Moultons are working again on their corral. It sure will be alright when completed,” reads another from the settlement then known as Grovont. A century sure can change things. Jackson has grown from a dusty hamlet at the Downtown Jackson wasn’t always a bustling place. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY edge of the Western frontier to a bustling mountain town, home to ski bums and tennial magazine should serve as a re- the Jackson Hole Historical Society and millionaires and everyone in between. minder of all that has gone into making Museum for helping provide the reAs residents revel in the town’s Jackson the place it is today. sources to bring this magazine together. Centenial Magazine Ad.pdf 1 7/22/2014 5:05:14 PM 100th birthday celebration, this cen— Ben Graham A special thanks should be given to

100

PROUD TO BE A PART OF OUR HERITAGE C

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TRANSFORMING THE VALLEY THROUGH COMPASSION FOR OVER 100 YEARS 1908 FIRST EPISCOPAL SERVICE | 1911 TRINITY CHURCH BUILT IN KELLY 1911 HOSTEL OR “REST HOUSE” OPENS | 1913 FIRST PUBLIC LIBRARY 1916 FIRST HOSPITAL COMPLETED | 1916 ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL CONSTRUCTED 1925 CHAPEL OF THE TRANSFIGURATION | 1974 GRAND OPENING OF BROWSE ‘N BUY + + + + + + + +

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Jackson Hole

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Jackson Hole News&Guide

B E A U T Y. H I S T ORY. L I F ES T Y L E.

Celebrating Jackson's Centennial 12-1025

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As the region’s largest locally owned real estate company, Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates is dedicated to a legacy of excellence that honors this remarkable destination. Our organization offers centuries of real estate experience and our brokers continue to champion and celebrate the area through a longstanding tradition of integrity, expertise and commitment to our clients and the community that we serve. Call or visit one of our locations to speak with a real estate professional.

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JACKSON HOLE REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES IS A GOLD SPONSOR OF THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. Jackson Hole 270 W. Pearl

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HERE'S TO THE NEXT

100 YEARS!

PUBLISHER

Kevin Olson

EDITOR

John R. Moses

DEPUTY EDITORS

Richard Anderson

Johanna Love

MAGAZINE EDITOR Ben Graham

ART DIRECTOR

Kathryn Holloway

PHOTO EDITOR

Bradly J. Boner

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Price Chambers

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Richard Anderson Clark Forster Kathryn Holloway Johanna Love Michael Polhamus

Emma Breysse Ben Graham Mike Koshmrl John R. Moses Brielle Schaeffer

COPY EDITORS

Lou Centrella Jennifer Dorsey Mark Huffman

DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Adam Meyer

ADVERTISING SALES

Karen Brennan Tom Hall

Matt Cardis Chad Repinski

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT COORDINATOR Oliver O’Connor

CREATIVE SERVICES MANAGER Lydia Redzich

AD DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Andrew Edwards Sarah Grengg Chelsea Robinson

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Amy Golightly

CIRCULATION

Jewelry Originals 38 years of inspiration at 6,000 feet

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Jackson Hole News&Guide

Kyra Griffin Pat Brodnik

Hank Smith Jeff Young

OFFICE MANAGER

Kathleen Godines

Jackson Hole News&Guide P.O. Box 7445, 1225 Maple Way Jackson, WY 83002; 307-733-2047 Fax: 307-733-2138, JHNewsAndGuide.com

4th Generation Expertise One of the most intrinsic parts of Jackson Hole’s Centennial celebration is the remembrance of the people and families who founded this magical valley even before the Town of Jackson was officially assimilated as a town.

BUDGE HOMESTEAD CABIN ALLEN BUDGE

JOE MAY

Chad Budge’s historical significance in Jackson spans 4 generations, back to the late 1800’s when both his mother’s and father’s grandparents homesteaded a part of what is now Grand Teton National Park. The May and Budge families made a living primarily from farming on what is now known as Mormon Row, just a mile apart from one another. Chad began his real estate career over 25 years ago helping people buy and sell their own little piece of Jackson to enjoy the same beautiful scenery his great-grandparents came here for. Our knowledge of the area and market is unsurpassed. Expert service and personalized attention has earned us the trust of repeat and referral based clientele. We welcome inquiries about any of your real estate needs.

CHAD BUDGE, Owner, Associate Broker 307.413.1364 DIANNE BUDGE, Owner, Associate Broker 307.413.1362 REBEKKAH KELLEY, Sales Associate 307.413.5294 chadbudge@jhrea.com 80 West Broadway, Jackson, WY 83001

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PEOPLE

Petticoats ruled Female mayor, town councilors and administrators cleaned up the town in the 1920s. BY BRIELLE SCHAEFFER

Jackson made a name for itself in 1920 when it became the first town with a civic government of all women. Known as the “petticoat” rulers, Mayor Grace Miller and Rose Crabtree, Mae Deloney, Genevieve Van Vleck and Faustina Haight made up the Town Council after being nominated for the ticket by Jackson citizens when prominent men refused to step up. The women, all socialite members of the “Pure Foods Club,” beat their opponents in some cases by a margin of 2-1. Crabtree bested her husband, Henry Crabtree, garnering 50 votes compared with his 31. Elected May 11, they swiftly appointed other women to take administrative positions when they took office June 7. Marta Winger was appointed town clerk, Edna Huff was health officer, Viola Lunbeck was named treasurer and Pearl Williams was town marshal, whose main duty was to keep livestock out of town. Those appointments were what made Jackson especially noteworthy in

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the year women were granted suffrage with the 19th amendment to the U.S Constitution. Oskaloosa, Kansas, and Kanab, Utah, had already elected allfemale town councils in 1888 and 1912. With its petticoat government Jackson underscored why Wyoming deserved its nickname, the Equality State, which it acquired after giving women the right to vote in 1869. “My recollection is that it was not in protest to former administration, nor, really, a matter of politics, but just an impulsive and spontaneous gesture on the part of an assembled Town Caucus, to give women a chance to run things,” Town Clerk Winger wrote in a 1981 letter that is now housed at the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum. “It was a very small town, and I remember the delight everybody felt when the event met with such enthusiasm from the press and papers all over the country carried the story. The ladies were besieged by investigative reporters — and Jackson was on the map.” The women not only put the valley

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Jackson’s all-woman town council was made up of Mae Deloney, Rose Crabtree, Grace Miller, Faustina Haight and Genevieve Van Vleck. They served from 1920 to 1923. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

in the limelight but also cleaned up the town financially and physically. When they took office there was only $200 in town coffers due to uncollected fines and taxes, according to a 1922 article from The Delineator magazine. “They went out personally and collected every cent due the town from those who ignored the notices,” it said. “Before the end of a fortnight there was $2,000 in the treasury.” With that money in hand the women began making improvements to what was then a dirty little frontier town due to the “easy-going” men in charge that resulted in a “slatternly town,” as the magazine said. “What the women have done to the town is worth telling because it proves that women can bring into practical politics common sense and business agility,” it said. “Jackson, Wyoming, is a small-town but small-town problems are big-city problems on a small scale.” They built new culverts, passed health laws that criminalized littering, instituted a clean-up week, asked homeowners to spruce up their buildings and refurbished the cemetery. “We simply tried to work together,” Mayor Miller told The Delineator. “We

Since 1991

Since 1977

put into practise [sic] the same thrifty principles we exercise in our homes. We wanted a clean, well-kept progressive town in which to raise our families. What is good government but a breathing place for good citizenship?” In 1921, Miller and oneyear incumbents Van Vleck and Haight were re-elected by hefty margins, a vindication for the women rulers. While Jackson’s history has a strong foundation of

Melissa Turley, right, celebrates with friends in 2006 after winning a seat on the Jackson Town Council. She now serves on the Teton County Board of Commissioners and represents a new contingent of women in government. BRADLY J. BONER

women in leadership, over the years that heritage has waned. Miller was the only female mayor of the town until Jeanne Jackson was elected in 2001. “We certainly have a lot to be proud of with our petticoat council of 1920, but when

Since 1941

YOUR LOCALLY OWNED JACKSON HOLE CINEMAS WISH OUR TOWN A HAPPY 100TH!

733-4939 • JACKSONHOLECINEMAS.COM

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SERVING JACKSON SINCE DIRT

HAPPY 100TH, JACKSON! In almost half of the Town of Jackson's history (48 years to be exact), David Nalley and Nalley Steamway have been involved in the first janitorial business, hot water extraction carpet cleaning service, and the first upholstery cleaning service. Nalley's is still the largest carpet cleaning company in town with their six-truck operation. Five of their ten-member team are family members, carrying on the tradition first started by James Nalley back in 1966. According to the President of Steam Way International, "Nalley Steamway is the premier example being used to educate other carpet cleaning companies across the USA.

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you’re in the Town Council chambers it’s pretty obvious ... there’s a lot of men on that wall,” County Commissioner Melissa Turley said. When Turley was first elected to the Town Council in 2006 she was the only woman on the council, and there were no women on the Teton County Board of Commissioners. She was met with some opposition because of her age and gender. Now there are three women — Turley, fellow County Commissioner Barb Allen and Town Councilor Hailey Morton Levinson — between the council and county commission, so gender is less of an issue, she said. “Research has shown when women make up 30 percent of a leadership body, that’s when folks stop talking about gender,” Turley said. Statewide, women make up about one-quarter of town officials, she said.

“Women are still 50 percent of our population, and I do believe we should have equal power in leadership,” Turley said. “I’d like to see more women in leadership in our community.” When more women serve in elected leadership roles, more women run for and are elected to office, Turley said. Levinson agreed. “It would be good to kind of get back to the days when we had a more female and more representative government,” she said. “I wish we had another woman or two” on the council. Still, the all-female government made a lasting impact on the community. “We’ve kept the values and the things that are important throughout the last century,” Levinson said. “I’m honored to be in Jackson and part of the Town Council and also part of the community in its 100 years anniversary.” 100

CONTRIBUTING TO JACKSON'S "FOUNDATIONS" – SINCE 1979 –

Teton County School District #1

celebrates along with the Town of Jackson its Centennial and the education of Teton County students.

HAPPY 100 YEARS 14

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JACKSON HOLE

Original Harrison Crandell photo used with the kind permission of his family

As we celebrate the last 100 years in our Valley spanning from smoke signals to high speed internet, from camping in the sagebrush to 5 star hotels, I hope we continue to cherish, protect and remember the reason why each of us were drawn to this magnificent valley. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here for the mountains, the powder, the back yard moose, the post card views that go on forever, our rich western heritage and the comfort that comes from always seeing familiar faces on the boardwalk. This and so much more combine to create a lifestyle that is like no other. Jackson Hole is authentic, real and welcomes you with open arms. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why it feels like home.

Pamela Renner, Associate Broker Jackson Hole Sotheby's International Realty pamela.renner@jhsir.com 307-690-5530

PEOPLE

A mayor made his mark Clissold created rodeo site and airport, so the stories go. BY MICHAEL POLHAMUS

Harry Clissold’s exploits — some audacious — as Jackson’s longest-serving mayor have earned him a place in local lore. The creation of Jackson Hole Airport is counted among those feats. The airstrip has proved to be a key part of the valley’s economic growth, but its establishment was not an easy task given its location inside a national park. Clissold appears to have been just the kind of notorious optimist needed to initiate the project. “Perhaps Harry Clissold’s most celebrated feat,” reads a 1971 Jackson Hole Guide story, “was the founding of the Jackson Hole Airport.” In keeping with his optimistic philosophy, Clissold simply went out to the area north of town and stepped off 6,000 feet for the runway. “Tradition has it that Harry wet his finger and held it up to determine the direction of the prevailing wind and thus the direction of the airport’s single runway,” the story said. Clissold established the airport while Grand Teton National Park’s superintendent was out of town, a Jackson Hole Guide story from 1967 reports. “The summer was a rainy one,” it read. “The town had engaged a contractor to do the street around the Square, and while he waited for the weather to clear, Clissold lured one of the men to bring out a blade and scrape the sagebrush off a strip 200x6,000 ft. for a runway.” Clissold and several notable townspeople then traveled to Salt Lake City to ask Western Airlines to begin commercial flights to the new airport. Representatives of the airline agreed to give it a shot but said the runway JACKSON CENTENNIAL

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would need a terminal building before they would start sending flights. Upon their return Clissold and several others went to the forest, felled some trees and used them to fashion a terminal. When Grand Teton National Park’s superintendent returned from his sojourn, the airport was complete. “It is not recorded what Supt. John McLaughlin said when he came home and saw the building,” the Guide reported in 1967. By the following year Western Airlines flew its first commercial plane to Jackson, where it was greeted by a party headed by Clissold. The airport today maintains the plan laid out by Clissold and remains the nation’s sole commercial airport within a national park. Clissold is reputed to have commandeered equipment on other occasions as well. The winter of 1940 was an especially hard one, and the recently constructed Teton Pass Road was buried in snow. Citing the exceptional cost of keeping it open, the state highway department made the decision not to continue plowing it. Clissold appealed to the state highway engineer and to Gov. Nels H. Smith, according to the book “This Was Jack-

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Jackson Mayor Harry Clissold, left, and Wyoming Gov. Nels H. Smith are seen here on Town Square at the dedication of a memorial to John Colter in 1939. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

son’s Hole,” by Fern K. Nelson. By January residents had grown restless, and, according to a 1965 Jackson Hole Guide story, Clissold suggested they open the pass themselves. A crowd went to the local highway department station Jan. 9, 1940. The people requested that the night watchman give up the plowing equipment, asking him to “save yourself some trouble” by not refusing, Nelson wrote. The watchman assented, and through the night the men cleared the snow. “As a matter of law, Jackson citizens should have been strongly reprimanded and made to understand that they could not pirate state equipment,” Nelson wrote. “However, throughout the rest of the state and even outside, public sentiment was so strongly with the Jacksonites that the state authorities hesitated to take punitive action.” The highway department chose to continue plowing Teton Pass Road from then on. Born in Salt Lake City on March 26, 1893, Clissold moved to Jackson Hole with his wife and three children in 1914.

We look forward to supporting Jackson for the next 100 years.

The family made the trip by wagon over 11 days, according to a Jackson Hole Guide piece from 1967. Clissold homesteaded the 160-acre Trail Ranch, north of White Grass Ranch in what is now Grand Teton National Park. He built a lodge and several guest homes and opened one of the valley’s first dude ranches, according to a 1973 Jackson Hole Guide article. “It was a beautiful life,”

Western Airlines was the first commercial airliner to provide service to the fledgling Jackson Hole Airport, which was established in large part by the efforts of Jackson Mayor Harry Clissold. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

he said to a Jackson Hole Guide reporter in 1971. “You didn’t have anything to worry about. We didn’t have any money. It was a wonderful life — altogether different from what it is today.”

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CONGRATULATIONS TOWN OF JACKSON 100 YEARS AND

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Clissold skied, too, but “not like they do now,” he said. “It was just as a means of transportation. We never just skied down a hill or anything like that.” Around 1929 Clissold sold his ranch and moved to Jackson. Soon after, he was elected to the Town Council, according to a 1971 Jackson Hole Guide story. His rise to politics came by accident. “I didn’t even know it,” Clissold said of the election. “I wasn’t at the meeting.” When he was elected, the council had not met in nine months because, he said, “They didn’t have any money to spend.” Once in office he immediately began work to improve Town Square. Council members tended the lawn there themselves, as the town had no money to do so. “Back in those days people worked together,” Clissold said. “When we felt the town really needed something, we all pitched in to get it done.”

In 1937 Clissold served as the mayor pro tem. When Mayor Charles Huff died that year, Clissold replaced him. As mayor, Clissold accomplished more than keeping the pass cleared of snow and laying down the airport. He also created the rodeo grounds. He “borrowed $8,000 on a personal note from the bank to buy the land, the town paid his note back, when it could and as it could,” according to a 1971 Jackson Hole Guide story. He also oversaw the establishment of Jackson’s first library, its septic system and its power grid. Clissold served as mayor for 31 years. At retirement he was the longest-serving mayor in the country. Having done more than perhaps anyone to make Jackson Hole the place it is today, Clissold died on July 1, 1971. Today he is memorialized, among many other ways, with a street downtown named in his honor. 100

Jewelry, Art, Antiques & Gifts

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Athletes peak in Tetons

PEOPLE

Skiers, snowboarder and climber are Jackson’s top 5 homegrown athletes. BY CLARK FORSTER Jackson breeds and attracts some of the top extreme athletes in the world. Kids who grow up in the Tetons have a grand advantage over mountain athletes from other locales. Steep, technical mountains like the Tetons and Snow King provide ample training opportunities. Wherever Jackson Hole natives compete, climb or explore they are hard-pressed to find more difficult terrain than what they grew up with in their own backyard. Nothing they see outside their hometown is too daunting. Nothing is too steep. Jackson kids are the hitters in the on-deck circle. They take their cuts with their weighted bats in preparation for the action ahead of them. When they’re called to the plate, the weight comes off and their bats are light as air. The challenging, highly accessible terrain makes everything else seem substandard. While many locals are afraid to admit it, the secret’s out. And it’s a secret that hasn’t been well kept among the world’s top mountain athletes. For decades the valley has seen an influx of extreme athletes looking to test and enhance their skills on our radical mountains. From dirtbags to Olympic gold medalists, athletes of all stripes have decided to live in Jackson Hole. Of the dozens of native and foreign world-class athletes who have called the Hole home, only five could be selected by this magazine as Jackson’s

On July 15, 1971, Bill Briggs made ski mountaineering history with the first ski descent of the Grand Teton. His tracks are shown in this photograph taken from the air the morning after. Briggs had a fused hip and was once told he’d be in a wheelchair by age 40. He was 39 when he skied the Grand. VIRGINIA HUIDEKOPER

top athletes. Narrowing the choice down wasn’t easy. There had to be some guidelines. Ultimately the criterion for determining the top five athletes in the town’s history was simple: Each had to be a product of Jackson. The athletes didn’t have to be from here. But they had to be a part of the community before they made their claim to fame. That meant no Tommy Moe or Keegan Bradley, no Lynsey Dyer or Josef “Pepi” Stiegler. They would have been stars without the

help of the Tetons. That eliminated a plethora of athletes. But even with the strict qualifications there were still a number to choose from. Many people left off the list are more than deserving, and some could even be considered the town’s top athlete. But only five could be selected. They are listed on the following pages in no particular order.

Bill Briggs

At the age of 2, Briggs had a socket chiseled out in his pelvic bone. He was

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born without a hip joint and was never supposed to achieve anything as an athlete. “The surgeon tells me to do anything I might want to do early in life because I’d be in a wheelchair by age 40,” Briggs said. But Briggs wasn’t one to always listen to surgeons. His hip d e t e r i o ra t e d throughout his young life, and at 29 he chose to have the joint fused. H o w e v e r, before the sur- BRIGGS gery he was able to lock his hip with a cardboard splint he had built so he could ski. Following Briggs’ surgery he was told by the hospital that he had to change to an inactive, stationary life. Ten years later Briggs became the first person to carve turns on the Grand Teton. Though doctors told him he’d be in a wheelchair at 40, at 39 he conquered the largest obstacle he’d face as a ski

mountaineer. The descent down the Grand on June 15, 1971, cemented Briggs as the father of big mountain skiing. Nobody before Briggs had ever done anything of that magnitude in the mountains of North America. Briggs knew he could do it. Fear wasn’t a concern. “Fear is a great asset,” he said. “Being scared due to the actual inherent risks is the reason for taking on the adventure.” That wasn’t anything out of the norm for the future U.S. Ski Hall of Fame inductee. In 1959 Briggs and friends Barry Corbet, Bob French and Sterling Neal chased a cougar down a glacier while skimming 2-foot-wide crevasses. The foursome were in the middle of completing the first high ski traverse in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The 100-mile traverse from the Bugaboo Mountains to Rogers Pass helped show the world what a great tool skis were for mountaineering. Briggs began completing first ascents in the Tetons in 1952 while he was away from college at Dartmouth. But he is most widely recognized

Any narration of the events that shaped the town of Jackson would not be complete without the mentioning of Glenn Napierskie, who came to the valley shortly after World War II. Having been a lifelong outdoorsman, Glenn quickly became enamored with the overwhelming beauty he found here. In 1952 he leased Flat Creek Ranch from Mrs. Albright and that would become the family’s “home away from home” for the next 30 years. During that time Glenn, his wife Virginia, and their four children would host a plethora of interesting people at the ranch including Lawrence Welk, Dick Cheney, Carol Lawrence, Curt Gowdy, and many others. Glenn was a visionary who realized that the cost of housing and lodging for regular folk in Jackson would soon spiral out of reason. He built properties such as The Ponderosa Apartments, Flat Creek Condos, Creekside Village, and The Virginian Apartments. This provided housing for people who live and work in the valley and would otherwise have to travel long distances. In the early 1960’s Glenn bought 15 acres from his friends the Wort brothers and opened The Virginian Lodge 20

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for first descents from the summits of Middle Teton and Mount Moran and for his final extraordinary adventure in 1974, when he skied Mount Owen. Briggs fell in love with Jackson and the Tetons and even became the director of the Snow King Ski School in 1966. The mountains brought him here, but the people influenced him to stay. “Seemed like these people were the only ones who would allow me to [do] my ski, climb and music-making lifestyle,” he said. Briggs said he understands why great athletes are attracted to Jackson Hole. “Mutual admiration and inspiration,” he said. “Misery likes company.”

Paul Petzoldt

Standing at 6 feet 1 inch and weighing 240 pounds, Petzoldt had the frame of a mythical figure capable of doing superhuman things. From killing an elk with a pocket knife to climbing almost 26,000 feet up K2 without supplemental oxygen, Petzoldt seemed right out of a Paul Bunyan folktale. In 1924, Pedzoldt became the

in 1965 despite critical comments such as, “Why’d you buy way out of town there?” and “A hundred room motel in little ole Jackson....are you crazy?” He envisioned it as a place where families could stay while experiencing the wonders of Jackson Hole. The Virginian became one of the first motels with a swimming pool in Jackson and over the years the property expanded into 170 rooms, a western saloon, an RV park, a convention center, and a restaurant. Although Glenn passed away in 2006, Virginia and the Napierskie family still own it. In the lobby of the Virginian, Glenn’s voice still echos with his favorite term, “Keep it western, boys!” For a number of years, Glenn owned the Cowboy Bar and he was responsible for installing the famous saddle bar stools. He and his partners built some of the retail space still seen in town today, including elements of Deloney Street and Gaslight alley as well as the now gone Jackson bowling alley. The transformation from the small cow town of 100 years ago to today’s Jackson that provides lifetime experiences to people from around the globe, came about through the energies of Glenn Napierskie and the many pioneers like him. Keep it Western Boys!

A young Paul Petzoldt with climbing gear in the late 1920s. JACKSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

youngest person at the time to summit the Grand Teton. He was 16. He did it in cowboy boots. The dangerous expedition for the inexperienced Idaho teen helped turn him

into a mountaineering pioneer. Petzoldt recognized the need for better preparation, technique and training. That led him to become the first climber to develop a voice signal system for climbers and to create techniques for snow travel. It also influenced him to found the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander in 1965. Petzoldt was considered a climbing virtuoso at an early age, and he continued to add to his reputation throughout his 91-year life. In 1934 he famously traversed the Matterhorn in Switzerland before retracing his route over the summit on the same day. Petzoldt completed extraordinary expeditions all over the world but his climbing home was in the Tetons. He climbed the Grand Teton more than 300 times before ceasing in his late 70s. He made a tradition of climbing the Grand each New Year’s Eve. He’d ring in each year by popping a bottle of champagne on the summit. Petzoldt knew the Tetons like the back of his hand. He and a park ranger once made a three-day trip in a bliz-

zard to the top of the Tetons to investigate a plane crash when no one else would. There the pair discovered 23 corpses. Petzoldt started the first guide service in the Tetons.

Travis Rice

Out of all the athletes the Hole has seen, few can say they were as good at their sport as Rice is at his. The Jackson Hole native pioneered the big-mountain freestyle movement right here in his own backyard. He’s considered the Paul Revere of the movement, and he frequently reminded riders and fans around the world why. At the age of 18 in 2001, Rice entered Snowboarding magazine’s Superpark, his first major snowboarding competition. There he attempted and completed a handful of backside rodeos off a 110foot gap jump. His career then took off because he attempted jumps that other pros wouldn’t dare. Later that season Rice competed in his first X Games, began appearing in snowboarding films and was named TransWorld Rookie of the Year.

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Rice’s achievements on the snow are immense. He has won five X Games medals, including two golds in big air competitions. He has two golds in U.S. Opens and seven medals total in the competition. He was even named Rider of the Year in 2005 and 2009 by snowboarding magazines TransWorld and Snowboarder. During his prime he was known by many as the world’s best all-around snowboarder. Today Rice continues his passion in the sport as a filmmaker, event founder and entrepreneur, among other things.

Martin Hagen

Hagen is one of the most recognized biathletes this country has ever seen. In addition to three Olympic appearances, Hagen also competed in seven World Championships, where he was consistently one of the country’s top three athletes in the sport. The Jackson native made his debut in the Olympics in 1976 at the Innsbruck Winter Games. The spry 21-year-old was the youngest American biathlete to

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Travis Rice, of Jackson, soars over Dick’s Ditch during the Natural Selection Snowboard competition. RACHEL SHAVER

ever compete in the Olympic games. In 1978 he was awarded the Sven Johanson Award as the top U.S. biathlete. Two years later he was the top American finisher at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games.

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Hagen competed in his final Olympic Games in 1984 at Sarajevo. At the time that was the most Olympic appearances by an American in the event’s history. He competed on the first U.S. junior biathlon team in 1973, where he became

the first U.S. junior biathlon champion. While with the Jackson Hole Ski Club as a teenager, Hagen earned a berth on four Junior National teams.

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Resi Stiegler

What Resi Stiegler has been able to overcome as a skier is nothing short of amazing. She grew up under the colossal shadow of her Olympic bronze-, silverand gold- medal-winning father, Josef “Pepi” Stiegler. Resi Stiegler suffered a series of devastating injuries that could have ended her career in its prime. Yet today she’s still persevering and still skiing. In December 2007 she crashed in Austria and broke her left forearm and right shinbone and tore her right ACL. In February 2009 she broke her foot. In November of that year she broke her left tibia and femur. In March 2012 she again tore her ACL. The injuries slowed her down but couldn’t stop her. After missing the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games because of her broken leg, Stiegler fought back to claim her first World Cup podium in 2012. Her ACL injury, which

DEDICATED TO THE EXTRAORDINARY. THE EXCEPTIONAL. THE UNIQUE.

Homegrown biathlete Martin Hagen competed in three Olympics and seven World Championships. COURTESY PHOTO

occurred just weeks later, did not stop her either. Stiegler made her second appearance at the Olympic Games at February’s games in Sochi, Russia. There she finished 29th in giant slalom before crashing on her second run in slalom. Stiegler began her Olympic career at the 2006 Torino Olympic Games at the age of 20. She proved she was one of the world’s best female skiers with an 11th-place finish in the combined and a 12th-place finish in slalom. She has 18 World Cup top 10s, two U.S. Championship titles and two Junior World Championship medals, and she has competed in six World Championships. 100

Jackson Hole native Resi Stiegler reacts in the finish area during the women’s combined slalom at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Sestriere Colle, Italy, in 2006. LUCA BRUNO

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History hidden in plain sight Streets named for settlers, old buildings refashioned for modern use are memorials to the town’s origins as a Western outpost. BY BEN GRAHAM

n a cold November day 100 years ago, citizens of the newly formed town of Jackson gathered in a plain rectangular building called “the Clubhouse” to cast votes for mayor and Town Council in the fledgling municipality’s first election. Just a few months earlier, in September, residents had voted 48 to 21 in favor of incorporating the town. At the time, the Clubhouse served as the primary community building for the small settlement of ranchers. It was built by the Jackson Hole Gun Club in 1896 and used over the years as a drug store, dance hall, courtroom, barbershop and church.

Today, after a century of growth in Jackson Hole, tourists mill about the very same building. They shop for jewelry, fancy women’s clothing and souvenirs plastered with images of cowboys and Wyoming’s flag at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s Town Square retail store. Despite layer upon layer of development over the years, the building that now houses the shops is, for the most part, recognizable as the Clubhouse of Jackson’s original settlers. It has the same shape and

The Clubhouse underwent construction in the first decade of the 20th century, expanding it to the building that is recognizable on the Town Square today. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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The Clubhouse is the oldest commercial building on the Town Square. Built in 1896, it was used as a drugstore, post office, barber shop, mercantile and more. The second story was added in 1905. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

the same style roof as it did during that inaugural election season for the town. Parts of the original log walls still stand somewhere beneath the current facade. Shops, high-end art galleries and hip restaurants now form much of the landscape of downtown Jackson, but the development belies the rough-andtumble history of a true outpost of the Wild West. There are still signs, though. The history is, in many ways, hidden in plain sight: in the street names and in old buildings around town.

Around the corner from the square and the old Clubhouse sits a building at the corner of East Broadway and King Street that pays homage to one of the first hotels in Jackson. In 1909 Ma Reed and her husband, Claude, bought a large New Englandstyle house at that spot and turned it into a hotel. That was decades before lodging and tourism would become the economic driver that makes the valley one of the wealthy zip codes in the country. Back then, it is said, Reed carried brass knuckles and acted as her own

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The Clubhouse now houses several Town Square businesses. Once a stand-alone building, it is part of the continuous storefront facade on the square’s east flank, but the building’s roof and windows are still recognizable. BRADLY J. BONER

Jackson Hole News&Guide

bouncer for the hotel and the restaurant that would come later. She was also known for her kindness, according to a note in the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum’s archives, “which often corresponded with a negative bank balance.” She eventually turned the Reed Hotel over to Rose and Henry Crabtree, who gave the establishment its better-known name, the Crabtree Hotel. It was torn down in the early 1990s, but the building that replaced it is an exact replica, according to the Jackson Hole Historical

Society and Museum. Shoppers can now get ice cream from the Haagen-Dazs shop located in the new building. The town itself is said to have grown out of a post office run by William and Maggie Simpson. “A small village evolved around the Jackson Post Office,” as John Daugherty put it in his 2002 book “A Place Called Jackson Hole.” Maggie Simpson decided to name it after frontiersman and fur trader Davey Jackson. The town would later get its name from the post office. The Simpsons were early arrivals to Jackson themselves. William Simpson laid the first plat of Jackson, which can still be found at the Teton County Clerk’s Office. It shows a three-square-block section of town, centered around what is now Miller Park. The family owned a ranch that stretched across the eastern portion of what

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Ma Reed, an early hotelier. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

is now town. Many streets can be traced back to the Simpsons. “Half the town is named after the Simpson family,” former Mayor Lester May told the Jackson Hole News in 1982. The Simpson name now adorns a street that bisects the eastern portion of town. What we now know

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as Snow King Mountain is referred to as “Simpson Ridge” on early maps. Another example, May told the newspaper, was Pearl Williams Hupp. Her mother was a Simpson, but Pearl Hupp earned her own fame in town by being appointed Jackson marshal in 1920 under the town’s all-female Town Council. Pearl Avenue now runs parallel to Broadway as one of the Jackson’s

Charles “Pap” Deloney built Jackson’s first general store on what was then the Simpson family’s ranch. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

main thoroughfares. Charles “Pap” Deloney opened the community’s first general store on the Simpson Ranch. The building is still standing today, and Deloney’s name has been lent to Deloney Avenue, one of the four streets that intersect to form Jackson’s Town Square. 100

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Jackson’s greatest gamble

hen John and Jess Wort built their eponymous hotel in 1941 they couldn’t have known it would end up the center of a town that then was a collection of unpaved streets and empty lots. The site where the Wort was to rise was a longtime family-run livery stable business, and when the Worts announced they would JACKSON CENTENNIAL

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tear it down to build a luxury hotel that would depend on summer tourists, people told them they weren’t thinking straight. “When we built the hotel all the streets were dirt in town, and they said we were crazy when we tried to borrow money in Jackson to build the hotel,” John Wort said in a rare interview in 1992, just before he died.

It wasn’t the first hotel in town. That honor went to the Jackson Hotel, built in 1901. But the Wort was to become a gathering place that brought locals together from their homesteads, a place that helped the outside world look away from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks long enough to notice the little town on their doorstep.

When the Worts said they would build a fancy hotel in Jackson, people thought they were crazy. They weren’t. BY EMMA BREYSSE

A dream, a prayer and a war

The “crazy” idea that became the Wort actually came from John and Jess’ father, Charles Wort. He and his wife moved to the valley in the late 1800s and by all acccounts became pillars of the community. Charles Wort bought land in what would become down-

town Jackson and built the livery stable and barn. In a town that even then attracted tourists heading for the parks, but had yet to draw skiers in the winter, the livery stable and the Clubhouse, which belonged to Charles Wort’s sister Belle, are two of the most recognizable buildings in old photos.

Wort Hotel circa 1950s. COURTESY PHOTO

The Wort businesses were even then the site of dances, meetings and other town gatherings. Charles Wort briefly owned and ran the Jackson Hotel, and he dreamed of moving up in the business.

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“My grandfather and my great-uncle opened the hotel to fulfill their dad’s dream,” said John Boyer, Charles Wort’s great-grandson. “My great-grandfather always dreamed of opening a place like that.” John and Jess Wort ran the Wort Lodge and Camp at Jackson Lake for many years, then decided to build the Wort Hotel. They hauled sandstone from John Wort’s beloved Gros Ventre Range, hired an architect and crossed their fingers. The hotel opened in 1942, just two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor dragged the United States into World War II. In an interview preserved in Jackson Hole Historical Society archives, Jess Wort said he and his brother feared they were doomed. Besides other obstacles, wartime rationing added another barrier to the task of getting building equipment and material to Jackson Hole, and made the gasoline that tourists needed to get there scarce. But the war also brought hundreds of young men to Hill Air Force Base in Utah who wanted somewhere to go on leave and who wanted something to do. One thing they did was indulge in what would become a Wort tradition, a dirty little open secret: gambling. Up until the 1960s the Wort and a few other places in Jackson, including the Cowboy Bar, took laws prohibiting gambling in Wyoming as suggestions they prefered to ignore. Early photos of the Wort’s Silver Dollar Bar, named for the coins in the bar top that still can be seen, show Jackson Mayor Harry Clissold and Teton County Sheriff Olin Emery at the poker tables. Emery dealt the cards on occasion, and less than a decade later resigned his post rather than crack down on gambling. The soldiers and airmen would drive to Jackson to gamble and would stay at the Wort. It was the making of the place, according to Boyer. It also marked the start of the steady growth of the tourism business in Jackson that continues to this day. Once the hotel was paid for it seemed Charles Wort’s dream had come true.

Refuge of the many, ruin of a few

While two down-home cowboy hunting and fishing guides might not seem like the people to run a luxury hotel, Boyer said they liked the work be-

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Gambling in the Wort Hotel Casino, circa 1941. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

cause they enjoyed being around their neighbors and making strangers into friends, especially his grandfather John Wort. The Worts invited the community in, and people made the place their own. Fern Nelson, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Jackson Hole News in 1980, called the Wort “the heart of the town” and “our Jackson Hole Ritz.” “It helped the town in that transition from livery stable into the era of ‘Hard Rock’ and ‘County Western,’” Nelson wrote. The Wort had just burned nearly to the ground, and the town feared it would never reopen. John and Jess Wort sold the hotel in 1960, the year Boyer was born, but their hotel remained, as News columnist Jill Bamburg put it, the “refuge of the many, ruin of a few.” Many of the events and traditions that still define Jackson Hole had their roots at the Wort. The Worts were the first in Jackson to bring musical acts from outside the state. The Wort has welcomed a wide range of acts, including the Sawmill Creek Band, Arlo Guthrie, the Chicago Knockers lady mud wrestlers and cameos by stars who just happened to be staying in town, like Willie Nelson and Roy Clark. In the early days of the Jackson Hole Shrine Club’s cutter races the teams raced downtown, right past the Wort Hotel. Big names of Hollywood hoping to

Jackson Hole News&Guide

stage silver screen dramas in Jackson Hole would house their cast and crew there, including the stars of “Shane.” The hotel’s meeting room and convention center played host to club and even government meetings, much as it does today. And, of course, locals looking for a drink and some gossip would meet at the coffee shop, restaurant, lounge and bar. In his 2006 book “Meet Me at The Wort: History, Legends and Lore of the Wort Hotel,” local historian Charlie Craighead wrote that some of Jackson’s notable citizens were at the Wort so regularly they had what could be considered “office hours.” If they weren’t there they would be soon enough, and longtime cocktail waitress Wilma Taylor, “the Queen of the Silver Dollar,” could pass on messages. The staff of the Wort kept the feeling of John and Jess Wort’s hotel alive even after the two brothers called it quits, shortly after gambling in Jackson Hole finally came to a stop for good in the late 1950s, Craighead wrote. The Wort caught fire in August 1980, and photos from the Jackson Hole News show crowds of people gathered, watching the blaze with shock and dismay on their faces. The original bar with its silver dollars was saved, but not much else. It was a year before the Wort reopened. When it did, the reopening of the

On Aug. 5, 1980, a fire destroyed the Wort’s famed gabled roof as hundreds watched. The roof was rebuilt and the hotel reopened the following summer. JACKSON HOLE NEWS&GUIDE FILE

Silver Dollar Bar coincided with a Chamber of Commerce Howdy Pardners celebration of Western life that became Old West Days.

Four-diamond future

It’s easy enough to see the spot the Wort Hotel holds in Jackson Hole — it’s still in the same place it’s been in since

1942, at the corner of Broadway and Glenwood Avenue, though the streets are paved now and the once-empty lots are some of the hottest real estate in town. From a crazy dream it’s become the safest bet in Jackson lodging, receiving a four-diamond rating from AAA, a spot on the National Register of Historic Plac-

es and billing as the Best Small Historic Hotel in America. What were once $2-a-night rooms now command as much as $400 during the summer season. Rooms continue to be filled with meetings of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce and events like Habitat For Humanity’s Halloween “Hallowine” party. There aren’t many nights when it’s easy to find a seat at the Silver Dollar Bar and Grill, especially on bluegrass Tuesdays when the dance floor is about as full as it can get. There are still Worts in Jackson Hole. John Boyer owns and runs the shop his mother, Lila “Skippy” Wort, started by selling Southwest Indian jewelry near the hotel’s front desk. She opted out of the hotel business when her father and uncle decided to sell, but she stayed close. Boyer’s Indian Art occupies the spot great-great-aunt Belle Wort Flanders used to own, within spitting distance of the Wort. The shared history of the businesses is evident in Boyer’s back rooms. One of the original slot machines from the Wort’s gambling days sits in his office.

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A selection of Harrison Crandall’s hand-painted photographs that once hung in the Wort are on the wall opposite. Cathy Sanders, Skippy Wort’s daughter, runs Lila Lou’s, a store named after her mother, just a block away. The hotel now is owned by Bill and Ginger Baxter and their four children, who remodeled it in 2006 and installed the dance floor and bandstand in the Silver Dollar, giving the Wort a place to present live music once again

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John and Jess Wort. COURTESY PHOTO

after the hotel’s larger lounge closed. Boyer said his grandfather’s legacy seems to be alive and well in their hands. “They’re the first owners since the hotel got sold that have come by and introduced themselves,” Boyer said. “I think they really get how important the hotel is and care about the history of the place. That’s very encouraging.” 100

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Jackson: Back then, right now

It’s the same place, but sometimes you have to look twice. STORY AND COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRADLY J. BONER BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY he past 100 years have brought incredible changes to the town of Jackson. During the century the remote settlement of hardy ranchers — a tiny dot in the vast American West — evolved into a thriving community and the gateway to a pair of America’s most loved national parks. The cityscape of Jackson has become virtually unrecognizable from its early days as development has spread across the southern end of “Jackson’s Hole,” named for David Edward “Davey” Jackson, a fur trapper who explored the area in the 1820s. But under the blanket of trees that have matured to shadow this mountain town can be found nuggets of history that tell the story of Jackson’s past. These photographs are among the oldest of Jackson’s landscape and early buildings. Their modern counterparts reflect how the town has transformed during the past 100 years, and how it has preserved its heritage and character. 100

OPPOSITE PAGE: A southeast view of the settlement of Jackson in the early 1900s before it was incorporated as a town in 1914. The Clubhouse can be seen near the center of the frame on what would become the Jackson Town Square.

The development that blankets the once-bare landscape of Jackson’s early days is almost completely obscured by trees, but some landmarks are visible in this view from East Gros Ventre Butte. The Wort Hotel stands at the right of the frame, while the roof of the Clubhouse, which now houses the Jackson Hole Resort Store and other businesses, can still be seen at center.

TOP: The Spicer Garage building was built in 1916 by Charles Deloney and leased to Walt Spicer, who operated it as a Ford dealership and shop. Over the years it has been a bowling alley, a gun shop, a shipping office and a bus depot. BOTTOM: The Jackson Hole Playhouse now has its home in the old Spicer Garage and has offered a rotating playlist of Western theater productions every summer since the 1970s.

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TOP: Riders cross the barren landscape in 1907 where Town Square would later be. In early days the “public square” was a hollow where Jacksonites threw construction debris. In 1917 the town acquired the land and began using the area for Christmas tree displays and rodeos.

TOP: George Washington Memorial Park, informally called Jackson Town Square, was established in 1932 to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of the country’s first president. Trees were planted shortly after that. The first of the four antler arches was constructed in 1953. Three have recently been rebuilt and the fourth, the one pictured here, is scheduled to be replaced next.

MIDDLE: Horsemen lend an Old West flavor on the east side of Jackson Town Square in this view looking north, circa the 1910s. The Clubhouse, the oldest commercial building on the Town Square, stands at center.

MIDDLE: Center Street now runs north and south along the east side of Town Square, and the business district has expanded in all directions.

BOTTOM: Looking south down Cache Street toward Snow King, circa 1920. A fence adorned with antlers was in front of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which left in 1934 and moved across the square to its current location on Deloney Avenue.

BOTTOM: The intersection of Broadway and Cache Street is today one of the busiest in Jackson. The building that once housed the International Order of Odd Fellows has long since been replaced by the antler arch on the square’s southwest corner — just out of view to the left — and the ski runs of Snow King are visible on the mountain side in the distance.

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TOP: The Karns Ranch was on the southern outskirts of Jackson, occupying a sparse and treeless landscape. This photograph was taken in the early 1900s. BOTTOM: A START bus cruises along Flat Creek Drive in this contemporary view of the general area of the Karns homestead. The Teton County Fairgrounds now occupy much of this location, with present-day Karns Meadow just across the road acting as in-town wildlife habitat along Flat Creek.

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TOP: By 1930 development in Jackson had begun to expand to the south of the town center, which can be seen on the right side of this photograph looking west toward East Gros Ventre Butte. LEFT: Looking west from near Town Square, circa 1920s, toward Deloney’s General Merchandise at right with the Spicer Garage behind. Deloney’s was built in 1906 by Charles Deloney, who sold everything from farm equipment for local ranchers to groceries for pilgrims heading to Yellowstone National Park. RIGHT: The intersection of Deloney Street and Glenwood Street, looking west toward East Gros Ventre Butte. The Wort Hotel is opposite of where this photograph was taken. The Jackson Hole Museum moved into the Deloney building in 1958 and stayed there until 2013, when it moved to its current location on North Cache Street. The Greater Yellowstone Indian Museum now occupies the old Deloney building. 40

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TOP: Residential development in east Jackson blankets the foreground of this contemporary photograph taken from the foothills below Crystal Butte. LEFT: Early homes along Glenwood Street, with Deloney’s General Mercantile at left, circa early 1900s. For many years Glenwood Street was the main artery in and out of Jackson to the north. RIGHT: The Wort Hotel now occupies the spot where the original photograph was taken of Glenwood Street looking north, but a similar view is gained near the street’s intersection with Deloney Avenue.

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TOP: Robert and Grace Miller built their house in Jackson, east of Town Square, and moved there in 1921 from their homestead to the north, where they had lived since the 1880s. Robert opened the first bank in Jackson, while Grace served as mayor on the all-woman town government. MIDDLE: The homestead of Webster LaPlant along Flat Creek, seen here in the late 1800s, was among the earliest settlements on the southern end of Jackson Hole. BOTTOM: An American Legion escort arrives at St. John’s church and hospital on June 17, 1921, with the casket of Curtis Ferrin, killed in World War I.

TOP: The well-manicured Miller House at 211 E. Broadway is now one of Jackson’s most unusual offices, the home of Wyoming Title & Escrow. MIDDLE: Residential development now borders Flat Creek in this view looking west toward the southern end of Spring Gulch and the Teton Range in the distance. More homes dot the base of East Gros Ventre Butte at center-right. BOTTOM: While St. John’s Episcopal Church has expanded with a new chapel and reception hall, the original chapel, steeple and building that housed the hospital remain, now partly obscured by mature pines.

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: Looking east down Broadway from near the Jackson Town Square, circa 1920s. The Miller House can be seen at left. LEFT: Like many of the streetscapes in Jackson, the view looking down toward Crystal Butte is now obscured by trees. The homes that once lined Broadway Avenue have long since been replaced by commercial development. Jackson Hole News&Guide

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What’s with Jackson’s name? An 1800s fur trader who passed through the Hole left his name behind. BY MIKE KOSHMRL n 1894 — two decades before the town came to be — postmistress Margaret “Maggie” Simpson made a decision that would ultimately give Jackson its name. A frontierswoman who lived near

the base of Snow King Mountain, Simpson had to decide what to call the post office she ran at her ranch. The valley was already known as Jackson’s Hole, and Simpson went with the simple, logical name: the

This is the only known representation of Davey Jackson, who died in 1837, almost three years before the invention of photography.

Jackson Post Office. It was the first recorded use of Jackson as the settlement’s name, but it wouldn’t be the last. The sign on Simpson’s post office surely would have been an honor to David “Davey” Jackson, who unknow-

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ingly gave his name to a town and a region that would become famous. Jackson, however, had already been dead for almost 60 years. An explorer, fur trader and businessman, Jackson wound up in northwest Wyoming because of an advertisement he read in 1822 in several Missouri newspapers. One of the ads read in full: “WANTED: 100 enterprising young men to ascend the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, there to be employed as hunters. As compensation to each man fit for such business, $200 per annum to be given for his services.” The Rocky Mountain Fur Company’s Andrew Henry led the expedition. His mission was to trap beavers and other fur-bearing critters that brought big money back East and in Europe. Historic figures such as Jim Bridger, William Sublette, Jedediah Smith and Jackson signed on. A giant of a man for his time, Davey Jackson stood apart from most of the 30 or so other men included in the party. The names of many of the fur traders he trekked west with have been lost to history. When Jackson set off into the wil-

The town of Jackson got its name from the post office, pictured here in the 1930s, which was named decades earlier after Davey Jackson. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

derness in 1822, the 33-year-old War of 1812 veteran left behind a wife and four children. It’s unknown when Davey Jackson first set foot in the valley that now bears his name, according to a 1996 biography published by the Jackson Hole Historical Society.

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“Since there is no historical record of when David Jackson first entered the celebrated ‘Hole,’ educated guessing is all that is left to the historian,” Vivian Talbot wrote in her book “David E. Jackson: Field captain of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.”

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Talbot’s best guess is that Jackson’s original trek to the valley under the Teton Range was in 1825. He spent enough time here that around 1829 fellow trader and trapper Sublette dubbed the valley “Jackson’s Hole.” Early on, the region’s name was actually “Jackson’s Big Hole.” The Hoback River basin was then known as “Jackson’s Little Hole,” according to one Jackson Hole Historical Society publication. Jackson later moved on to a managerial role in the fur trading industry. In 1826, with two of his equally famous comrades, he branched off from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The new venture was named Smith, Jackson & Sublette. By the early 1830s Jackson tired of the nomadic life, and at least temporarily he returned to the East.

In 1837, while in Tennessee, he died at age 49 of typhoid fever. Historian Robert Cleland wrote of Jackson’s legacy in his 2000 book, “The Reckless Breed of Men.” “But if historical records have proved so indifferent to Jackson’s memory,” Cleland wrote, “the lake and valley among the Tetons that bear his name are monuments sublime and enduring enough for any man.” Some years before incorporation, the town became known as “Jackson.” The name stuck. Postmistress Simpson had set the stage for its naming, but by 1914 she had already departed the valley. Today, besides the town itself, there are several places in the valley that use Jackson’s name, the most notable being Davey Jackson Elementary. 100

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1914 JACKSON HOLE COURIER

LEFT: In 1914 wolves are a growing concern for ranchers, who dispatched a man to “smoke” wolves and hoped to eradicate them from the range. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ABOVE: “Jackson Votes Incorporation” is seen in the September 24, 1914, edition of the Jackson Hole Courier. JACKSON HOLE COURIER

Courier tells tale of incorporation year Jackson’s first newspaper reported on wolves, first car on Teton Pass, start of World War I. BY JOHANNA LOVE

The first newspaper in town, Jackson’s Hole Courier, was printed each Thursday starting in 1909, five years before the town of Jackson was officially incorporated. Scanning through its archives takes readers back to a time when language was more formal, ranchers felt sorry for starving elk, wolves were vilified and everyone was trying to make a living in this hardscrabble valley. People birthed babies at home, kids rode in a covered-wagon school bus and adults enjoyed entertainment like political speakers, dancing and dinner parties. The flag of the Courier reads “Jackson, Lincoln County, Wyoming.” The first edition on file with the Wyoming

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Newspaper Project is April 2, 1914, edition No. 14. • Stephen N. Leek showed his photography at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “wonderfully beautiful pictures of our valley,” the Courier reported. “Mr. Leek had colored each picture by hand, and they were wonderfully well done, in spite of the fact that it was his first effort in that line.” Leek also contributed an essay called “The Elk: their home and habits” to the April 9, 1914, newspaper. He wrote about the ecology of the herd, closing with an acknowledgement of the government buying hay to feed the elk: “At the first sign of spring ... they go back to the range, not emaci-

Jackson Hole News&Guide

ated and half starved as in years gone by, but in condition to bring forth and nourish offspring with the spirit, courage and strength to enable them to withstand the elements during their first winter on earth.” • Under the headline “About the mass meeting,” the Courier’s April 16 edition covered the matter of incorporating Jackson. “No headway was made on account of the fact that no one had come supplied with facts and figures,” the Courier reported. “A committee was appointed consisting of five men, Otho E. Williams, J.R. Jones, James S. Simpson, Chas. Deloney and C.B. VanVleck, to secure data regarding the cost of incorporating and running the town.” • The May 14 edition reported that a small “but very enthusiastic” meeting was held regarding incorporation. A census had been taken and a land survey was in the works. The paper took editorial license with the last paragraph of the article: “There seems to be no reason why we can not have a good little town, with a few improvements, and yet not work a hardship on anyone.” • The headline “Too many wolves” in the May 21 edition occupied the top left corner of the Courier’s front page. “Jess Buchanan reports that a band of about 15 wolves killed four yearlings and one

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Communications cow from the bunch of Redmond’s cattle which was taken up to the range about two weeks ago.” • The U.S. Post Office ordered the establishment of a post office in the town of Kelly, the Courier reported on May 28. • The June 4 paper contained its usual complement of people news, aka gossip. Ray Storer of Grovont broke his leg in two places “while having a friendly scuffle with Ben Goe.” ... “Little Charlie Deloney has been quite sick for the past few days, but is now on the improve.” ... “Grandpa Cripe stayed in Jackson to visit for a week at the Reed home.” ... “Charles Gaskell and Fred Shinkle are doing some plowing for G.E. Carpenter. Gaskell is using a two-bottom plow with six horses, and Shinkle a three-horse outfit.” ... “Frank Robinson has cut and hauled a set of house logs, and is putting up a cabin on the claim on Antelope Flats, on which he recently filed.” • July 16’s headline read simply “Is getting the wolves.” “Walter Dallas who was hired by the Fish Creek Wolf Association to smoke up the wolves on the Grovont range has already secured four wolves and the Association is highly elated over the success of their plan to rid the range of them. In the past year the wolves have cost the cattlemen on that

Stephen Leek’s photographs of dead and starving elk in Jackson Hole helped urge Congress to establish the National Elk Refuge in 1912. STEPHEN LEEK PHOTO COURTESY AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER

range several thousand dollars, and they have come to the conclusion that an equal amount of money spent toward extermination of them would be a good investment.” • The first car to drive over Teton Pass unaided was celebrated with the headline “Hupmobile climbs Tetons.” “People who came over the hill Wednesday say they cannot see just how the Hupmobile could make the climb, but the auto party report having no trouble.” • The Courier kept residents apprised of what was happening across the globe. The Aug. 6 edition proclaimed that “All Europe has broken forth into war, and that continent is facing one of the most serious and bloody wars the world has ever known. Nearly every European country is involved, and all Europe is in arms. ... All stock exchanges are closed indefinitely. The financial situation in this country is, however, considerably improved.” • Merchant Charles Deloney posted an advertisement in the Aug. 13 paper advising people to purchase their year’s supply of sugar before prices rose sharply because of the war. Russia and Germany were both

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large sugar producers. • Nearly three weeks in advance, the Courier advised its readers of a special election to be held Sept. 21 to decide the question “Shall we incorporate the town of Jackson?” • A small headline nearly halfway down the page on Sept. 24 read “Jackson votes incorporation.” The special election results were tallied at 48 to 21 in favor. “The election of officers will be held in a few weeks, giving the people an opportunity to look around and decide whom they want to put in charge of town affairs.” • Just below the incorporation headline was a small notice by August Christiansen: “My wife having left me, I will not be responsible for any debts which she may incur.”

• On Oct. 8 the Courier reported a rare opportunity for outside entertainment. The Christy Minstrel Company “is reported as having a good band and some good black-face comedians.” • Although the Courier regularly ran advertisements at the bottom of its front page, in election season two ads floated to the top, just underneath the flag. Ads took up two-thirds of the top line, one for Geo. W. Tanner for county assessor, and the other for Fred L. Thompson, a Democratic candidate for state treasurer. • At about 10 p.m. on a Friday the people of Jackson were startled to see the schoolhouse on fire, the Courier reported Nov. 26. “The fire already had so good a start that there was no

The Sept. 24, 1914, edition of the Jackson’s Hole Courier. JACKSON HOLE COURIER

possibility of putting it out without the aid of a fire department, which Jackson does not boast.” The building was insured, so before an adjuster could arrive and a new school built, lower grades were taking classes in the Baptist church, the sixth and seventh grades in the W.O.W. Hall and eighth- and ninth-graders in St. John’s House. • In the December election for Jackson’s first mayor and council, a “citizen’s ticket” decided upon the week before was elected: Harry Wagner as mayor, and councilmen C.J. Wort, Chester Simpson, H.W. Deloney and J.R. Jones. 100

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PLACES

Watering holes now dried up

James Franklin “Dad” Hinesley in front of his store, Jim’s Place, in Wilson in 1938. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Jackson’s early history is filled with bars and saloons that have long since disappeared. BY JOHN R. MOSES Saloons were a big part of Jackson’s social life by the time it became an incorporated town in 1914. That was well before their 1951 enshrinement in literary lore by author Donald Hough in his witty slice-of-life satire “The Cocktail Hour in Jackson Hole.” The bars described in Hough’s books were the next generation that grew from Jack Ruby’s Wine Garden, predecessor to the Cowboy Bar. By the time silver dollars were being lacquered over to form the Wort Hotel’s

bar top the older establishments were mostly gone. While some old photos remain, hard history is tough to come by. As 85-yearold hospitality industry veteran Bob Dornan noted, “It’s hard to remember where the old ones were.” Especially those that predated him. Whether it was bad bricks or simply progress, saloons like the Frontier (which Dornan said was across from what is now the Wort Hotel) and Rube Tuttle Saloon near Town Square have vanished.

What is clear is that, from the turn of the century into the days of Prohibition, weather was more of a factor in the town’s supply of alcohol than temperance. “There were stills all over the damn valley,” Dornan said. And there were trucks bringing hooch to Jackson. Suppliers in Utah ran juice to Chicago. Prohibition was often in the back of people’s minds.

Early local watering holes

Places like the Rube Tuttle Saloon on Town Square often drew men who sought a respite from commerce or a place to relax away from the ranch. Tuttle opened the place in 1902 but by 1911 it was owned by Theophilus Lloyd and became Tuttle and Lloyd’s saloon. The Frontier Saloon nearby had a liberal code circa 1930, boasting a sign that welcomed female customers.

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Dam workers in Moran had their own place. And during times when Wyoming’s neighbors across the Idaho border were dry, they just had to find their way up the Snake River to Star Valley, where a legendary spot that’s now only a memory was decidedly wet and happy to supply.

Dry? Only when snowed in

If you had trouble finding a speakeasy in Jackson of old it’s because in Wyoming finding liquor was so easy — when it was around in this isolated area. The National Park Service’s websites chronicle the rigors of crossing Teton Pass in the early days by wagon or truck. Blizzards sometimes stopped Idaho rail traffic that fed goods into the valley. Photographic records kept by federal revenue agents show agents focused on rural stills in the Casper and Rock Springs area, among other hot spots. By the time Prohibition came to Wyoming in 1919, the effects locally were limited, though locals were wary. In his book author Hough recalled his first cocktail party, which he claimed was held in Jackson during Prohibition

Peggy Pendergraft, right, and Jeanette Withers, middle with skis in front of Eddy’s Cafe and Frontier Saloon with a sign that reads “Ladies Welcome.” JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

in the U.S. Post Office lobby — the lockboxes holding the bottles, the gin inside reputedly brewed in a tub beneath a local church.

A local provider

The last state to adopt Prohibition in 1919, Wyoming arguably also had the worst liquor law enforcement record in America. Even circa 1930, when federal law enforcement officials had honed their

craft and were brewery-busting pros, a historical photo shows a store in Wilson proudly advertising beer for sale. One Jackson merchant and homesteader was a Prohibition entrepreneur. The little-known tale of homesteader George Lamb lives in the archives of the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum, penned by grandson Thomas Lamb IV. A native Jacksonite who records stories from the past, Thomas Lamb

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IV describes a Jackson community that took care of its own needs, the Snake River canyon and Teton Pass often being closed. George Lamb was a pillar of early Jackson, owning Lamb & Reed Lumber Company and building the horse ranch and dream home he loved called Palamino Acres. In 1914 he homesteaded land now occupied by the Snake River Sporting Club. Thomas Lamb recalled his grandfather, who died in 1956, as a teetotaler, but found cause to question any devotion to temperance as a teen when he went to work at the old lumber yard decades after Prohibition had faded. Young Thomas’ Dad told him to clean behind the wood bins, a dirty task that had never before been done. He climbed behind the stacks of milled pine boards and into a part of his family history. “I was amazed at what I saw,” he wrote. “Behind the bins was a wooden-floored room about 6 foot wide and 10 to 15 feet long. It was full of spiders. Sawdust, dirt and a full wall of shelves of mason jars. Mason jars in a lumber yard?” A talk with his Dad unveiled some family lore.

“That rascal grandpa was selling moonshine out of the lumber yard. … Dad had heard about Grandpa and his extra activities, but he didn’t know the room was there. My grandfather said, ‘Ya can tell a heavy drinker by the callus on his nose. That’s where the Mason jar hit when ya got down to the last drop.’” With a little more thought, Thomas linked up a few more puzzle pieces.

Home-made whiskey often came from Rock Springs, sometimes in fuel trucks. The boarded-up door near the shelves of Mason jars led to what used to be a Phillips Bulk plant. “That little room was smack dab next to and had a doorway to the oil storage area,” he wrote. That room was apparently a jar-filling station. 100

People gathering at a flag ceremony on Town Square. JACKSON HOLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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The National Elk Refuge, circa 1910. STEPHEN LEEK PHOTO COURTESY AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER

Refuge shaped Jackson’s borders, ethos Residents’ work to save elk herd pushed development elsewhere. BY MIKE KOSHMRL Save for a few small hamlets and subdivisions, developed portions of Jackson Hole end at the north edge of town. Past the residential Gill Addition and St. John’s Medical Center is one very dramatic buffer: The 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge. Thousands of wintering wapiti and expanses of sage flats and cattail marshes occupy refuge grounds just hundreds of yards away from dense residen-

tial development and the Jackson Town Square. The east-to-west lines demarcating Jackson’s north boundary have their roots in a congressional act that precedes the formation of both the town and the refuge, one Jackson Hole historian said. “In the very beginning, when settlers came to the valley they were here because of the Homestead Acts,” Bill Chaney said. Jackson Hole News&Guide

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Any section for the 160 acres that they could acquire through the Homestead Act had a straight line, Chaney said. “You ended up with a bunch of straight lines in different locations, and that’s what created the boundary between what is now the town and the refuge.” The natural lay of the land helped shape the boundary as well. In places there is less than 2 miles between the steep

A line of bull elk walks across the National Elk Refuge on a chilly morning. BRADLY J. BONER

pitches of East Gros Ventre and Crystal buttes, and not all of the valley floor in between was developable. Wetlands that naturally occur along Flat Creek and where Cache Creek once flowed also dictated the town’s settlement, Chaney said. The push to acquire lands from homesteaders to form an elk refuge dates back to

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the early 1900s. In August 1912, Congress appropriated $45,000 to purchase the first of many pieces of land that would be dealt from private hands to the federal government. The formation of the elk refuge didn’t require clandestine land acquisitions such as those that formed Grand Teton National Park a half century later. People of the day were mostly cooperative and understanding, history texts show. “Some of the most intelligent residents of Jackson Hole have estimated that the value of elk to the region is equal to the revenue derived from stock raising, which is the principal industry,” U.S. Department of Agriculture biological surveyor Edward Preble wrote in 1911. “It is evident that elk have played a very important role in the development of the region.” Severe winters in 1909,

1910 and 1911 killed thousands of elk, galvanizing the community around the federal government’s protection efforts. “They could see that the deaths of a lot of elk was happening,” Chaney said, “and the chance to save the elk was in their minds. Not only did they like to see them, but it brought in tourists. And they were used for hunting.” Money also played a role in creating the refuge. Teton views weren’t yet valued, and Jackson Hole’s land at the turn of the century was still cheap and abundant. “With the creation of the refuge, the residents all the sudden had someone that could pay them to sell their land,” Chaney said. Two-thirds of the people who sold their land on what’s now the refuge took the money, left the valley and never returned, he said. 100

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placEs

Kelly and Jackson, one-time rivals Both towns wanted to be the county seat when Teton County was created in 1921. BY RICHARD ANDERSON

Around 1900, early settlers in the valley built a wooden bridge across the Gros Ventre, a few miles downstream from where it emerges from the mountains that give the river its name. For perhaps a decade after, the community that grew up around the river crossing was known as “Bridge,” according to John Daugherty in his authoritative history “A Place Called Jackson Hole.” Then, around 1910, William Kelly “proved up” 40 acres by the river. He raised cattle and chickens and children in a largish hut that, judging from photos on file at the Jackson Hole Historic Museum and Society, appeared pretty rustic there among the dust and the sage. Four years later, when a post office was approved for the settlement — which by then included several homes, a school, a good-size mercantile, the

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valley’s first Episcopal church, a hotel or two, a blacksmith and a lumber mill — the powers that be named it Kelly. In addition to this bustling little developed area, there were a number of ranches nearby, some of which would soon start to experiment with attracting guests. And the valley’s main road leading north passed through, taking advantage of that sturdy bridge. Kelly became big enough, in fact, that after Gov. Joseph Carey signed legislation in February 1921 that created Teton County (before that it was part of Lincoln County, which only a decade earlier was part of Uinta County), the town very nearly became the county seat. And then, six years later, it was almost wiped completely off the map.

Kelly today and yesterday

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Kelly today occupies an unkempt

Kelly’s Episcopal church was built in 1911 and survived the flood of 1927, but the building burned to the ground in 1971. FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAWN KENT

little crook in the topography where the highlands of the north end of the National Elk Refuge pile up against the flank of sheep Mountain, or the sleeping Indian as it’s widely known. There’s one little store with beer and snacks and sandwiches and such, a log post office where kids from Kelly Elementary school stop on their Halloween parade to pick up treats, some rental cabins, 10 or 12 yurts — a circa 1980 effort to create affordable housing in Jackson — and several dozen homes, the older of which look like they’ve endured many a hard Wyoming winter. The center of the settlement is a weedy, cobble-ridden vacant lot, which is owned by Grand Teton National Park. Here and there a few structures appear to have been abandoned. Except for the whisper of the wind across the plain and the unceasing white noise of the river, Kelly is awfully quiet, but the village has many charms. Neighbors wave to one another as they pass on the few streets that make up the town road map, kids ride horses to school, and buffalo and moose are common sights in backyards. A silverygreen sea of sagebrush stretches out to Blacktail Butte, a panoramic view of

the Tetons is in your face, and a certain funky maverick vibe, mostly unspoken and mostly unselfconscious, pervades. A recent walkabout around town with Dawn Kent, a fourth-generation Kelly resident, took about a half an hour. And we were going very slowly, pausing to regard this or that shack or shed where 60 or 70 years ago the schoolteachers lived or where the lady who served hot lunches every day for the schoolkids lived. “Kelly proper was down on the river,” said Kent, who has devoted a remarkable amount of time to studying the history of the Kelly-Grovont district of Jackson Hole. “That’s where the flour

mill was, the sawmill, the hotel, the general store, the post office — quite a few things.” Kent’s great-grandparents came to the valley with a group from Rockland, Idaho, in 1896. The robust sagebrush along the base of Blacktail Butte suggested fertile ground, and so these Mormon pioneers settled there, establishing what is still referred to as Mormon Row, though its post office went by the name Grovont. “There were people over here living as well,” she said of Kelly. “I think it was all considered one community.” Jackson marks the 100th anniversary of its official incorporation on Sept.

Kelly’s unofficial historian Dawn Kent brushes back grass from the sinking cornerstone of the 1911 Kelly church, nearly the only remnant of the building her family later repurposed as a general store. PRICE CHAMBERS

Life in Kelly in the 1920s. FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAWN KENT

17. Kelly’s centennial date is a little fuzzier. “There are three years that could be considered the anniversary,” Kent said, “It’s either the year Kelly got his plot, or the post office was set up in one of those years, and maybe the school — something else happened.” In the late 1910s, the idea was hatched to create a Jackson’s Hole County. At the time Jackson’s Hole was still part of Lincoln County, and the county seat was in Kemmerer, a good 150 miles south. In the days before automobiles were widespread it took about three days to get from there to here, though that distance didn’t keep county officials from collecting taxes from Jackson. In 1921, Rep. William C. Deloney, son of Charles “Pap” Deloney, a prominent early resident of Jackson, got a bill introduced in Cheyenne to create Sublette and Jackson’s Hole counties. The Jackson’s Hole Courier followed the proceedings closely. Beneath the headline “Jackson’s Hole County is Practically Assured,” the paper reported, “Excitement in Jackson’s Hole has been at fever heat for the past week, since Representative Deloney introduced a bill in the state legislature providing for a new county, to be known as Jackson’s Hole County.” Sure enough, the bill passed through the House and Senate with relative ease, although there was some late

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The site of Kelly, after the flood. FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAWN KENT

wrangling about the exact borders of the new county. Some felt county lines should follow watershed lines. In the end Jackson’s Hole County wound up a few townships smaller than expected. And its name was changed to Teton County, of course. But Gov. Carey signed

the bill into law on Feb. 18, 1921. “Eventually this assures us of our long-dreamed-of desire to govern ourselves and dispense our tax money here in the valley where it emanates from,” wrote the Courier. But there remained a few bureau-

cratic challenges to overcome — and, Jackson Hole being Jackson Hole, even way back then, unexpected hurdles presented themselves. In April, Gov. Carey named T.R. Wilson, of Alta, W.P. Redmond, of Kelly, and P.C. Hansen, of Jackson, the first commissioners of the nascent county. Among their first duties was to set a date for a special election at which two questions would be decided: “Do we want a new county?” and “Where shall the county seat be located?” At the new board’s first meeting, held May 5, 1921 (the same week the town of Jackson’s all-woman town council was re-elected to a second term by an even wider margin that two years earlier) the date was set — June 25 — and the lobbying began. “Of course it’s a foregone conclusion that we want a county of our own,” the May 19 Courier opined. “We’ve hoped and wished, worked and waited for it for several years. “As to where the county seat shall be it seems equally a foregone conclusion,” the paper declared. “There is only one logical place for it; and that is Jackson.” That conclusion proved to be not unanimous. Writes Daugherty, “Unexpectedly, proponents of Kelly gar-

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Snow King Ski Area & Mountain Resort has been a part of the Jackson Hole landscape for 75 years.

75 nered considerable support throughout the valley. Editorials in the Jackson’s Hole Courier reveal a split in the community, characterized by a surprising level of acrimony. The editor of the Courier was caught in the middle as a booster of both valley and town. As the June election approached, rhetoric heated up in editorials and letters to the editor. Introducing more controversy, a small but influential minority opposed the creation of Teton Country.” While an online review of the blessedly digitized pages of the Courier reveal little in the way of letters supporting Kelly, a lengthy piece on the front page of the June 16 edition, titled “Twelve Reasons Why County Seat Should Be At Jackson,” laid out “uncontravertable reasons” for voting for Jackson. Among them were that Jackson was the only officially incorporated town in the valley, that it was largely through the efforts of Jackson businessmen and citizens that the county issue got pushed through the Legislature in the first place, that Jackson’s winters were less severe than Kelly’s, and that Jackson already had established itself as the valley’s center of commerce, with a bank, a high school and offices for attorneys and the like. Not bad arguments. But not enough for some. The vote went down as scheduled. The results were frankly shocking: 424 for Jackson,

A signs greets early visitors to Kelly. It was later washed away in the flood. FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAWN KENT

402 for Kelly. Equally surprising, in the precinct of Alta, 66 residents voted against a Teton County at all, with 40 voting for Kelly as the county seat and 18 voting for Jackson. “It was rumored late in the campaign that Kelly and every town west of the Snake River would go solid against county division,” the Courier reported June 30. “However this rumor was entirely untrue, for out of 176 votes cast at Kelly only four were against.” Thus the people have spoken. But the fight wasn’t over yet. In true Teton County spirit some felt the law of the land had been violated, and the lawyers were brought in. The July 14, 1921, Courier reported that “about 100 people in and around Kelly had decided to contest the legality of the county itself.” A Mr. Rose, an attorney from Kemmerer, was contracted to bring the suit, claiming that 1919 legislation required a property valuation of no less than $5 million and a population of no less than 3,000 to create a new county. Teton County’s assessed property tallied just over $2 million, the suit declared, and its population was less than 2,000. Ultimately it took another two years, another round of legislation and a Wyoming

Dominating Jackson’s skyline, Snow King has provided year round recreational opportunities for locals and visitors alike for over three quarters of the town’s 100 year history.

Offering the most affordable skiing and snowboarding in the Inter -Mountain Region, Snow King’s 14/15 Season Pass is now on SALE for only $249 for adults and $179 for Youth

HEADIN’ TO THE HIDE OUT for 42 years where Cowboys and Presidents shop! Happy Trails!

HIDE OUT LEATHERS Town Square across from the Cowboy Bar 307-733-2422 • hideoutleathers.com Tues - Sat 10-9 • Sun-Mon 10-7 Jackson Hole News&Guide

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Happy 100th Jackson!

We at Full Steam Subs look forward to steaming up delicious meats for you for the next 100 years. Come check us out for our HOT DOG HAPPY HOUR FROM 4-7PM, where all hot dogs are two for one.

One block north of Town Square, 180 N Center St. next to Home Ranch parking lot. Open seven days a week 11am-7pm • (307)733-3448

35 years of proudly protecting the wildlife, wild places, and community character of Jackson Hole

Please join us for our 35th Anniversary Celebration and video showcase honoring the locals who form our roots

Sunday, September 21st 6:30 p.m., Center for the Arts

Free for the community 62

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Supreme Court decision to resolve the question and formally create Teton County. Kelly rolled with the punches. Daugherty reported that by 1926 the town had added several stores, a garage, a livery, telephone service, mail delivery and even a taxi service. A woman by the name of Mini Strober owned the general store, which had by then moved into the Episcopal church. “My grandparents bought it from her in 1926,” Kent said. “Then, not long after — less than a year — it all went down in the flood.”

The flood

On June 23, 1925, 50 million cubic yards of Sheep Mountain slipped off its northern slope, dammed the Gros Ventre River and created a lake that stretched six miles up the canyon. Two years later, on May 17, 1927, snowmelt and heavy rains

topped the natural dam, and the next day the barrier gave way. Charles Dibble, a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service, kept a close watch on the water, and when he and another witness saw a wave of water roaring down the canyon he raced to the closest house that had a phone to have the woman there call and warn those downstream. Most got the warning in time. The Kneedy family, owners of the valley’s only flour mill, did not believe the news, however, and the family of three was killed by the deluge that not only flooded the town of Kelly but wiped the landscape clean of most buildings. Photographs of the area immediately after the flood show a plain of soaked cobble stones and the remnants of only a few cinder block foundations. Kent said Kelly never really recovered after the flood. A few people set to rebuild-

Dependable local news.

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ing, but most moved on. On our walking tour of Kelly she pointed out a boulder, larger than an automobile, that she said she thought had been carried down the river and left in what had once been downtown Kelly. “My mother was 9 when the flood came. She didn’t happen to be in school that day because she had swallowed a Red Cross pin the day before, and the doctor had said to keep her home from school.” Standing in the doorway of her home on the far west side of the sagebrush plain, Kent said, her mother watched the wall of water wash the town away and then spread out for miles across the valley floor.

What was left

Just three structures in Kelly survived the great flood: the Episcopal church, the parsonage next door

and the Kelly school — all of which sat on the bench above the river channel. The parsonage still stands on its original site. The Kelly school was moved upstream and now serves as the bathhouse of the Kelly yurt park. The church became the Kelly store, which Kent’s parents owned and continued to operate until 1971 when it burned down. Today just one corner of the log structure survives, with a bit of clay foundation, subsiding into the earth, bearing the date 1911. Kelly never returned to its former glory. Kent said a few folks stuck it out and rebuilt, but most moved on. Kelly is not without its charms, it’s true — that view, that sea of sage, that spunky spirit — but always in the background is the whispering rush of the river, and always in the memory of the village is the day that river took it all away. 100

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RaymondJames.com/JacksonHole | Judith.Singleton@RaymondJames.com PO Box 508 170 E Broadway, Ste 100D, Jackson, WY 83001 | ph: 307-732-6652 | fax: 307-732-6658 Jackson Hole News&Guide

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• 1822 - Davey Jackson sets off from Missouri for the Rocky Mountain West as a fur trader. His name would eventually be lent to the valley he explored and the town that popped up at its southern edge. • 1872 - Yellowstone National Park becomes the world’s first national park.

• 1884 - “Jackson’s Hole,” as the valley was known then, sees its first homesteaders: John Holland, John Carnes and Millie Sorelle. • 1896 - The Jackson Hole Gun Club builds the Clubhouse.

• 1898 - William Owen and his climbing party reach the summit of the Grand Teton in what was the first or second ascent of the mountain. • 1912 - The National Elk Refuge is created.

• 1914 - Settlers vote to incorporate the town of Jackson.

• 1920 - Jackson voters elect the first

TIMELINE

all-women municipal government in the world.

• 1921 - Jackson beats out Kelly to become the county seat of the newly formed Teton County. • 1927 - The Gros Ventre River breaks the dam formed by a massive landslide and floods the town of Kelly, killing six people. • 1929 - Grand Teton National Park is founded. • 1932 - The Town Square is created. • 1938 - Snow King Ski Area opens. • 1941 - The Wort Hotel opens.

• 1953 - Jackson Hole Rotarians build the first elk antler arch on Town Square. • 1966 - Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s first aerial tram begins taking skiers to the top of Rendevous Mountain.

• 1971 - Bill Briggs makes ski mountaineering history with the first ski de-

scent of the Grand Teton.

• 1987 - National Museum of Wildlife Art opens on the Town Square. • 1994 - The town and county approve a comprehensive master plan that will dictate future development in the valley.

• Sept. 20, 2014 - Jackson residents celebrate the town’s 100 birthday at the Center for the Arts.

Happy 100th Jackson, and Thanks for Over Half a Century of Music!

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est.1981

When we opened Fighting Bear Antiques, in the little log cabin on Simpson Street in 1981, I did not know if our business would survive a year. Here we are 33 years later and still growing. Our business has succeeded thanks to our great clients, who have chosen this special valley as their home. It is wonderful that Jackson is celebrating 100 years, and it is our duty to remember what made this area what it is, “The People” that share and respect its beauty. May Jackson grow and prosper, yet maintain its charm and Western heritage.

375 S. Cache | 733-2669 | 866-690-2669 www.fightingbear.com

Terry and Claudia Winchell Jackson Hole News&Guide

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INSPIRE I NVE ST ENRICH Jackson’s original settlers helped one another survive in this rugged valley. Today, the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole continues this tradition by investing in our community and addressing local needs. For a quarter of Jackson’s history, the Foundation has inspired philanthropy and enriched the lives of thousands.

IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH PHILANTHROPIC LEADERSHIP 245 East Simpson Street • PO Box 574, Jackson, WY 83001 • 307-739-1026 www.cfjacksonhole.org • www.volunteerjacksonhole.org • www.oldbills.org