Scott Hunter on trail ride in the Gros Ventre Mountains across the valley from the Grand Tetons
Jackson Hole WY is nestled between the magnificent Grand Teton Range on the west and sublime Gros Ventre Mountains to the east, the Wyoming Range on the south eastern flank, the Snake River Range on the southwestern flank and the Absaroka Mountains touching base on the north eastern corner. The Grand Tetons on the west side of the valley isn’t the only breath taking geologic feature, upheavals and erosion in the Gros Ventre range on the east side of the valley have produced an interesting formation. These works of nature have created what appears to be a "Sleeping Indian," complete with mouth, nose, flowing headdress, and folded arms across the chest. With a sharp eye and a little imagination you can see the Indian on the horizon. This Valley is also home of Grand Teton National Park and is the southern gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Jackson Hole is known world-wide as the best of the old west.
Many who visit Jackson wonder why the town of Jackson isn’t named Jackson Hole, as Jackson Hole is where they set out for. This conundrum deserves an explanation. The mountain men of yore called valleys; “holes,” Davy Jackson was the mountain man that trapped beaver in the valley of the east side of the Grand Tetons; therefore, it became known as Davy Jackson’s Hole or Davy Jackson’s Valley. It has in the ensuing one hundred ninety years been shortened to Jackson Hole; therefore, the town of Jackson is in the valley called Jackson Hole. The community, the valley, and the lake were all named after mountain man, trapper, and trader, Davy Jackson.
A limbar pine frames the Cathredal Group of the Grand Teton Mountain Range
The hole or valley is 48 miles long and six to eight miles wide, embracing an area of approximately 400 square miles. The Snake River Flows through the Valley and the Grand Tetons tower 7,500 feet above the valley floor with the Grand Tetons rising to 13,770 feet above sea level.
Jackson Hole lays a few miles west of the continental divide and lies near the Snake River’s headwaters in Yellowstone. Hundreds of mountain streams converge from the surrounding highlands, adding to the Snake River’s flow.
With so many mountain ranges within a stone’s throw, Jackson is a hub of outdoor recreation opportunity. Skiing is the major winter pastime, and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Snow King and Grand Targhee all offer an excellent skiing experience and accommodations but many locals prefer the Teton Backcountry for their ski mountaineering adventure, skinning up the mountain gives you a greater appreciation for the descent. There is a saying around Jackson; “I came here for the skiing but stayed because of the summer. There is about five fun things you can do in the winter but in the summer there are hundreds, horseback riding, fly-fishing, whitewater sports, canoeing, hiking, and photography just to name a very few.
Grizzly Bears like this one roam the mountains surrounding Jackson Hole. There are about 600 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Eco-system.
Jackson is the prefect North American Wildlife Safari destination; elk, deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, pronghorn antelope, moose, grizzly bears, black bears, and many other small mammals can be found throughout the valley. A plethora of bird species hangs also can be found in the valley throughout the year including various ducks, eagles, geese, and trumpeter swans. Jackson Hole is also home to the National Elk Refuge where thousands of elk winter right outside the town of Jackson. The National Elk Refuge, northeast of Jackson, provides a home for thousands of elk each winter. Visitors can take sleigh rides among the elk from mid-December through April.
History
Until shortly after 1800, Jackson Hole was a favorite spring, summer, and fall hunting ground of the Indians, but the Indians, unlike us, always had the common sense to move to warmer places for the winter. There is a mountain in the Grand Tetons named Mt. Teewinot The name of the mountain is derived from the Shoshone Indian Tribe word meaning "many pinnacles" and Teewinot is thought to be the name the Shoshone Indians called the whole Grand Teton Range.
John Colter was the first American to see Jackson Hole In 1807, originally a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a fur trader named Manual Lisa, who had recently set up a trading post on the Yellowstone River recruited Colter to do some PR work with the Indians and let them know where his trading post was and that he was open for business. He traveled south down the Bighorn River, west up the Wind River, over Togwotee Pass, down through Jackson, over Teton Pass and down through eastern Idaho telling the Indians he encountered along the way of the trading post on the Yellowstone River. He then backtracked through Jackson Hole, then veered northwest into Yellowstone but that is another story.
The decades that followed are frequently called the "Fur Trade Era," for the Teton region became the scene of intensive exploration and trapping activities. The mountain men of Jackson Hole were hardy characters who, over a period of about two decades contributed to the opening of the western frontier. Among these frontiersmen were Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger and Davy Jackson. William Sublette (a partner of Davy Jackson's) who, named Jackson Lake and Jackson Hole after Jackson in 1829. Jackson Hole was a crossroad of trapper trails of the fur trade era, because six trapper’s trails converged as the spokes of a wheel upon their hub.
By 1845, because of the declining supply of beaver pelts, the corresponding increasing price and the new popularity of silk top hats spelled the demise of the beaver trapping business. During the next four decades, the valleys near the Tetons were largely deserted, except for Indians who still-hunted here.
As the American frontier expanded and one government expedition after another surveyed the west, the most important of these for Jackson Hole was the Hayden Surveys of 1871, 1872, 1877, and 1878. These survey parties named many of Jackson Hole's natural features, including Leigh, Jenny, Taggart, Bradley and Phelps lakes and Mount St. John. William H. Jackson, a member of the 1872 Hayden Expedition, took the first known photographs of the Tetons. In 1879, and Expedition artist Thomas Moran put them on canvas.
In the mid 1880s, the first settlers came. They entered by the Gros Ventre River Valley from the east and Teton Pass from the west, most were Mormon, the villages of Kelly, Jackson, Wilson and Moran were established by these pioneer homesteaders. Among these early settlers was Nick Wilson who became failure with Jackson Hole when he ran away from home to live with the Chief Washakie’s Shoshone tribe in the 1950’s.
Jackson Hole, once over shadowed by Yellowstone, due to it’s embarrassment of riches has become a destination resort in it's own right. Many visitors passed through Jackson Hole on their way to Yellowstone then return to Jackson Hole year after year because of the plethora of recreational opportunities it offers the visitor.
Jackson Hole Wyoming
News and Stories
Grizzly Bears looking for elk they have just chased off and a wary elk watching them.
Driving down a high mountain pass after heavy snowfall is never easy. What made this descent more hazardous than usual was the skiers on the highway. In ones and twos they schussed alongside the snow bank at the edge of the road as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. It came as something of a relief when a pair of these back-country skiers turned off into a car park: they had obviously misjudged the point at which they would emerge from the forest onto the road. What else would a back-country skier do when faced with having to get down a snow-covered slope? Walk?................................Once the road was clear of skiers I could concentrate on where I was going-namely, to the bottom of Teton Pass on the road that leads from the great plains of Idaho to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As the road bottomed out beyond Wilson I made a surprising discovery: that Jackson Hole is a place of astonishing natural beauty.................................Statistically, "an acre of Jackson Hole is likely to contain 2.5 elk, or 3 horses, or 2.3 tons of hay, or 1.5 cattle, or 1 buffalo, or 0.8 skiers". That information comes from an advertisement for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in the 1991/2 season, so it might not be strictly accurate. But it does indicate that skiers are far outnumbered by the animals, many of which also come (via the Grand Teton National Park and the adjoining Yellowstone park) for the winter season. So with the promise of seeing not just thousands of elk but also bison, moose, bighorn sheep and coyote, I spent my first day in Jackson Hole on a wildlife expedition in the company of Benj Sinclair of Teton Science Schools.-------------------------------------------> More
Jason Tatersall takes a 50 line into corbets couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort
An on-slope advisory sign at Jackson Hole starts with a statement that’s hard to dispute: “This mountain is like nothing you’ve experienced before.” Indeed, Jackson Hole is a standard-bearer among United States resorts, and its multiple bowls, rock-strewn chutes and plummeting glades, as well as a liberal out-of-bounds policy, are why so many pro skiers and snowboarders call Jackson home. In some cases, orange, lollipop-like warning signs are all that stand between you and a potentially bone-jarring cliff drop. In that way, the feel is closer to that of a European resort, where individual risk assessment and self-accountability are the norm.
Yes, half the trails are expert runs, but then again half of them aren’t. Plenty of less adventurous skiers find their niche at Jackson, too,-------------------------------> More
This Land Is Their Land: How the Rich Confiscate Natural Beauty from the Public
Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in effect since sometime in the 1990s: if a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there. All right, I'm sure there are still exceptions -- a few scenic spots not yet eaten up by mansions. But they're going fast..............About ten years ago, for example, a friend and I rented a snug, inexpensive one-bedroom house in Driggs, Idaho, just over the Teton Range from wealthy Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At that time, Driggs was where the workers lived, driving over the Teton Pass every day to wait tables and make beds on the stylish side of the mountains. The point is, we low-rent folks got to wake up to the same scenery the rich people enjoyed and hike along the same pine-shadowed trails..................But the money was already starting to pour into Driggs -- Paul Allen of Microsoft, August Busch III of Anheuser-Busch, Harrison Ford -- transforming family potato farms into vast dynastic estates. I haven't been back, but I understand Driggs has become another unaffordable Jackson Hole. Where the wait staff and bed-makers live today I do not know.
Little Jackson Hole, Wyo., is anything
but a cow town •
By Linda Lange
Aficionados of the good life come
to roost in Jackson Hole.This casual, yet sophisticated,
destination is the right place for anyone who is serious
about having fun.Vacationers indulge in fly-fishing,
horseback riding, hiking, mountaineering, and winter
sports of all kinds.
Visits to shops, museums, theaters and gourmet restaurants
satisfy the less outdoor-inclined. All this pleasure
reigns in a landscape that is indescribably beautiful.
Discover
Jackson Hole • by Matthew Jaffe
With all due respect to heaven, it’s got nothing
on Jackson Hole at dawn. A.J. DeRosa is heading
out on a float trip down the Snake River. A native of
Chicago,
DeRosa arrived in this corner of Wyoming in 1972.
He’s
been guiding on the river for 27 years using wooden
boats handmade from Douglas fir. The river is running
high, and the boats settle into the current south of
the Wilson Bridge. The head of
a bald eagle flashes white as it catches sunlight
high in the trees. In stretches, DeRosa stops paddling
and
the boat wheels in lazy circles, creating a kaleidoscopic
panorama of Jackson Hole: blue sky, cottonwood forest,
and the dark, jagged summits of the Tetons.
Three
Perfect Days in Jackson Hole • by Dina
Mishev
When
the snow melts, a completely different Jackson Hole
emerges. (To clarify, Jackson Hole is the entire valley,
and Jackson is the largest of the valley’s six
towns.) Ski runs morph into trails surrounded by wildflowers
that are perfect for hiking, biking, and running. Rivers
rise to white-water level. Animals come out of hiding,
and the ranches that give the area its Wild West attitude
come back to life. The roads through nearby Grand Teton
and Yellowstone national parks reopen. And faster than
you can say, “My muscles can’t take any
more,” you can find a symphony or country-music
concert, a festival, a rodeo, an art show, a winetasting,
great shops and restaurants, or a spa where you can
rest your body. Three days is the perfect amount of
time to sample Jackson Hole’s cowboy-cosmopolitan
style and enthusiasm for outdoor adventure.
Jackson
Hole Golf & Tennis Club Gets
New Look • The Jackson Hole (Wyo.) Golf & Tennis
Club has announced that the historic course will reopen
on Friday, June 30, 2006 after a 5:00 p.m. ribbon-cutting
ceremony presided over by Senator Grant Larson (president
of the Wyoming senate). Redesigned by Robert Trent
Jones Jr., who also designed the original course in
1967 for
Lawrence Rockefeller, the course recently underwent
$4.7 million in enhancements.
Whats
happening in Jackson Hole? • Jackson
gets a lot of the credit -- or, some might say, the blame
--
for inventing cowboy
chic. While other winter resorts like Vail strive for
a kind of European Old World coziness, Jackson and
the surrounding valley, called Jackson Hole, feel wide
open, as though a bustling tourist destination with
challenging ski slopes and a hundred ways to spend
time and money somehow just moseyed up off the open
range.
Jackson
Hole Grows up • The Jackson Hole Mountain
Resort in Wyoming long prided itself as the dominatrix
of North
America's
ski areas. By day the resort in the shadow of the Grand
Tetons thrilled and bruised its devotees with bucking
bronco-rides down runs like the Paintbrush. It dared them
to try the mine shaft drop into Corbet's Couloir and cajoled
them to doing one more lap on the ski..........
Jackson
Hole, WY • By Edith
Thys Morgan • Maybe it will happen in winter, atop
Rendezvous Bowl, as your eyes take in the snow-blanketed
valley
that
stretches below and your legs quiver, anticipating
the 4,100glorious vertical feet that fall away beneath
you. Or it might happen early on a quiet summer morning
as you round a corner on your mountain bike and find
your route blocked by a moose. Or perhaps the moment
will come in a quiet fishing spot on the Snake River,
as your gaze wanders up, then farther up, to the jaws
of the Tetons, biting ocean-blue sky. But eventually,
most visitors to Jackson Hole will wonder: Is there
some way - any way at all - to avoid going home?
In the mid 1880s, the first settlers came. They entered by the Gros Ventre River Valley from the east and Teton Pass from the west, most were Mormon, the villages of Kelly, Jackson, Wilson and Moran were established by these pioneer homesteaders. Among these early settlers was Nick Wilson who became failure with Jackson Hole when he ran away from home to live with the 
Jackson
Hole Golf & Tennis Club Gets
New Look
Whats
happening in Jackson Hole?
Jackson
Hole Grows up
Jackson
Hole, WY