Jackson Hole - Horse Thieves and Celebrities; Cheap Beer and Overpriced Pretzels

We’d pulled into Jackson late on a Saturday night a bit disoriented, very hungry and too dog tired to worry about food.  Well the wife didn’t worry about food but I opted for some overpriced room service; but I repeat myself because room service is culinary grand larceny.  What we found in the morning when we headed into town was not the Jackson that I remembered from childhood when we visited on a family vacation.  Understand that I don’t have the faintest recollection of my childhood Jackson but I can state with positive certainty that my childhood Jackson was not this Jackson. I couldn't imagine that the Jackson that my parents brought me to was a haven for the 1 percent. 

The Jackson that we were strolling was beyond any wild hallucinogenic fantasy that might have staggered John Colter’s mind when, in 1807, that mountain man became the first white to descend into the valley that would come to be known as Jackson’s Hole after trapper David Jackson.  (A “hole” was what mountain men termed a high valley surrounded by mountains.)  A couple of decades later fur would be the valley’s big attraction; bringing the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to work the streams for beaver pelts.  Beaver hats were all the rage with the rich back east and in Europe.  In history there are constants and one of those is that when the rich have an itch that needs scratching someone inevitably gets screwed.  In this case it was the North American beaver. 

Some 200 years later I noted that animals were still getting screwed by the itch of the rich as the wife and I stood in front of a furrier called the Alaska Fur Gallery.  In my apparent naiveté I had imagined that here in 2016 furriers were going out of fashion.  We didn’t go inside because I’m not a big fan of furriers.  That, and I’ve found that when you attach the word “gallery” to the back end of a retail store’s name it means that whatever ‘s for sale inside is well beyond my budget.  Along with the fur gallery there are art galleries and jewelry galleries and a plethora of other galleries.  Sotheby has a real estate gallery in Jackson and we didn’t stop there either because there is nothing in Sotheby’s listings that I can afford without selling everything I own and still be in hock.  Jackson also has food galleries, most notably Michael Mina who has a restaurant at a guest room gallery; The Four Seasons.  At Michael Mina’s joint you can get a single appetizer pretzel with American cheese for 13 bucks.  And if you want a beer with your 13 dollar pretzel you can get a Bud Light for 5 dollars.  So for 18 dollars you get really bad beer and a pretzel.  I’ve done much better at the ballpark and let’s face it; ballparks are notorious for being a rip off.  Jackson is apparently trying to be the Rocky Mountain version of California’s chic Napa Valley and to a large extent it’s succeeded.  When I mentioned that comparison to the proprietor of a hifalutin western wear shop (definitely not Boot Barn) she was damn near orgasmic.

But if you aren’t a foodie and you want to get out of the culinary stratosphere there is The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar where you can belly up to the long bar inlaid with silver dollars, sit on a saddle (the bar stools are actual saddles) and have a PBR and a basket of hot wings for less than that pretzel.  It’s about the only place in town where you can actually see a few rough and tumble looking guys prowling around the pool tables.  We had an evening snack at the Cowboy Bar.  The wife wasn’t at all impressed with the saddles.  She found them uncomfortable and noted that sitting in one hurt the, uh, female area.  That was a bit depressing since my vacation plans included going horseback riding.  As we were sitting at the bar a woman asked me if the saddle was comfortable.

“It’s a saddle,” I shrugged.

“As least it isn’t moving,” she said.

I offered that it might if you had enough tequila shots.
A short while later another woman approached me and asked if the saddle was comfortable.

“It’s a saddle,” I shrugged.

“As least it isn’t moving,” she said. Well you know the rest. 

Jackson Hole has historically been home to some famous individuals, starting with explorer, Colter.  Famous trapper Jedediah Smith who was a co-owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company spent some time in Jackson Hole.  Decades later the valley was home to a Harvey Gleason who the Chicago Herald dubbed “the premier horse thief of the mountains.”  Now Jackson Hole is home to Harrison Ford, Sandra Bullock and Dick (there goes the neighborhood) Cheney and I’m sure a countless number of corporate big giant heads who get big giant paychecks and have big giant stock options.  I’m not sure that all of this is a big improvement over Jed Smith and the premier horse thief. 

But Jackson is foremost a tourist destination that owes its fame, not to the celebrities that live there but the three celebrities that are a short drive up the parkway.  Those would be the three peaks that are the showpieces of Grand Teton National Park that draws tourists from around the world.  Mount Moran is the most prominent.   Mount Moran’s presence is everywhere.  It is THE peak.  It imposes its will on everything and everyone around it.  The surrounding area is a fiefdom lorded over by the majesty of Mount Moran.  Indeed as you drive along the parkway and park roads you can’t take your eyes from it.  You feel the presence of that peak even in the town itself; one of the few places where you can’t see the mountain itself.
 

Mount Moran

The very first visitors to Jackson Hole didn’t come for the view.  They came for the same thing that ironically modern visitors can’t wait to see; the bison.  Those first visitors were Shoshoni, Crow, Blackfeet, Bannock, and Gros Ventre; Native Americans who hunted and used every part of the big shaggy majestic beast.  Between those first visitors and today’s tourists the white man managed to kill the bison to near total extinction and in the process both saddening and enraging the Native Americans by taking only the hides and leaving the rest to rot.  The elimination of the bison would become part of the government strategy to eliminate the Native American.

Bison graze in the valley

Jackson Hole’s main attraction might be the mountains but the wildlife is the real traffic stopper.  The bison herds cause traffic jams that back up traffic and delight the motorists.  When was the last time you saw a motorist that was happy to be stuck in traffic?  A driver might stop in the middle of the road to get a glimpse of a single bison grazing 100 yards away but a driver will definitely stop for a herd ambling down the middle of the road oblivious to the steel beasts that they seem to think are interlopers in their territory.  I watched one car that was stuck on a lonely side road completely surrounded by a group of bison that were in no apparent hurry to let the driver go about his business.

 

Antelope graze with bison in the background

Clearly the most celebrated animal is the elk. In the early 20^th century the residents adopted the elk.  In 1908/09 a severe winter threatened to starve the elk herds wintering in the valley.  The local citizens responded by buying and providing hay to get the herds through the winter. The following winter was no better and again the citizenry came through.  These efforts would eventually lead to the creation of the 25,000 acre National Elk Refuge in the valley just north of town.  This is just one of many elk feeding ranges where citizens work during the winter months as elk feeders.  About 100 miles to the south of Jackson, near Pinedale, Wyoming my cousin is an elk feeder. She drove us past bales of hay being staged for the winter elk feed. During our stay in Jackson Hole we didn’t see many elk but late one afternoon standing in the waning light of the afternoon sun we gazed from the summit of Signal Mountain and listened to the lonesome sound of elk bugling in the valley far below. 

Jackson’s population is listed at just over 9000 but if you throw in the tourists that number would fluff up considerably.  Jackson seems like a sort of cultural mish mash, a Wild West Istanbul.  There are the aforementioned rich folk who contrast with the blue collars that populate the taverns, but it’s the tourists that account for a United Nations gathering in a mountain valley.  The families in vans; the retirees in motor homes; the tour bus crowd confined to their busses except when allowed fifteen minutes off the bus for good behavior to take in a spot that really deserves a couple hours;; the car campers and the backpackers:the hikers geared up in Patagonia boots and Marmot jackets walking past a middle aged guy wearing Bermudas and dress socks with his hiking boots.  The tourists come from every state in the Union and every compass point on the globe.  Early one morning we went into the park to Oxbow Bend of the Snake River and joined a global community of photographers waiting for the sun to cast its first light on Mount Moran.  There was the guy setting up his 3000 dollar Canon camera and 10,000 dollar zoom next to a brightly dressed skinny Chinese chickie holding an iPhone on a selfie stick.  And there was everything in between.  Oh yeah, I left out the Russians and Eastern Europeans.  As we found out from a cashier at The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, Jackson has become a destination for Eastern Europeans with work visas.  They work in the service industry until the visa runs out and then it’s back to the motherland.  In the summer you can add to this stew the bikers who use Jackson as a stopover on the way to Sturgis and in autumn the hunters geared up in camo, toting high powered rifles.

Since Jackson owes much of its existence to the tourists who can’t afford the galleries you’ll find the usual touristy souvenir and t-shirt shops where the 99 percenters can get a made in China, Grand Teton throw for the couch, some t-shirts and a few odd gimcracks emblazoned with Mount Moran or the silhouette of a bison.  And so while strolling the historic downtown (and what self-respecting tourist town doesn’t have a historic downtown?) you can find a souvenir shop selling a 20 dollar print of a comely Native American woman, who looks like she stepped out of a Viagra ad, wearing chic, cleavage revealing buckskins and what looks like makeup, and then you can visit a gallery a few doors down offering the self-same comely maiden on a signed and numbered giclee print that goes for 8000 dollars.

It was the last week of September when we were in Jackson; the off season.  Some of the local businesses were closed and wouldn’t reopen until the next spring.  All of the outfitters that offered horseback riding and rafting were closed.  In the park, many of the facilities were shut down for the year.  Yet despite the closures and the lack of families with children, Jackson was still packed.  We asked one of the shopkeepers what it’s like during the summer and he said the town is jammed.  Jammed to the point where it sometimes takes him 45 minutes to go the 9 miles from where he lives.  His co-worker added, with a roll of the eyes that at least in the off season there are fewer kids.  It’s hard to imagine a small Wyoming town with a bona fide daily traffic jam.  I wonder what some of the old timers make of it.  Hell what would old John Colter make of it? 

Wyoming is called The Cowboy State and much of the state plays off of that theme to bring in the tourists.  It was certainly that way with Cody, Wyoming.  After all you can’t disappoint the Frenchman who wants to walk down a wooden boardwalk and into a saloon where he can sit at a bar and wet his whistle with a shot of whiskey while gazing around at the animal heads and lever action rifles mounted on the walls.  And you can do that but still the Old West seems a bit understated; almost as if that western stuff is a bit unsophisticated for the Chamber of Commerce.  We only saw two cowboy hats during our stay in Jackson and one of them was sitting on my head.  And yet in reading the local newspapers I was gratified to see the cowboy tradition is still entrenched if a little hidden.  The front page of the sports section noted that the local high school’s rodeo team had won a recent competition.  Good on them!  

Jackson reminds me a bit of the California Gold Rush town of Murphy’s.  When I was a kid Murphy’s was a historic little nugget in the Gold Country that was rich with the tradition of the mid-19^th century gold rush.  For years it was one of my favorite places to visit.  And then wine was discovered in the area.  During the years since my childhood the grape has become the new gold and the Gold Rush has for the most part been forgotten.  The 19^th century charm has long disappeared and the once quiet little town is chock a block full of foodies and wine sippers.

Jackson isn’t there yet and I hope that it never does get there.  And while it sounds like I’ve been maligning Jackson, I enjoyed it.  It’s got a walkable historic district that the wife and I took in on a few occasions.  I’m not a big fan of the frou-frou, white wine and appletini crowd pushing aside the mountain man history and Wyoming boots and saddles tradition but I’m gratified to know that the attractions; the beautiful scenery and magnificent wildlife will continue to draw tourists to Jackson’s Hole and keep it a welcome destination for us commoners.