Jackson Hole Has Been Quietly Old Money Since a Rockefeller Bought Up the Valley

Jackson Hole's transformation from a remote Wyoming cattle valley into one of America's most secluded addresses for old wealth traces back almost entirely to one family's quiet, decades-long land purchase. Grand Teton National Park exists in something close to its current form because John D. Rockefeller Jr. didn't like what he saw when he first visited the valley in 1926.

A Rockefeller buys the view

Rockefeller, the son of Standard Oil's founder, toured the valley with Yellowstone superintendent Horace Albright in 1926 and was reportedly dismayed by the dance halls, billboards and tourist shacks already creeping up beneath the Tetons. Rather than lobby for regulation, he set up the Snake River Land Company and spent the following years quietly buying up ranch land across the valley floor without disclosing his involvement, until a local newspaper forced the company to reveal his identity in 1930. The revelation triggered years of local backlash, with Jackson Hole residents split for a generation over whether the Rockefeller land would ever actually become public.

From private ranch to national park

It took until 1943 for Franklin D. Roosevelt to fold much of the valley into a new Jackson Hole National Monument by executive order, a move so unpopular locally that Wyoming's congressional delegation tried to have the monument abolished. Rockefeller didn't formally hand over his holdings until 1949, and Congress only merged the original 1929 park, the 1943 monument and the Rockefeller land into today's Grand Teton National Park in 1950. The family kept one piece for itself: the JY Ranch on Phelps Lake, used as a private retreat for three generations before Laurance Rockefeller donated it back to the National Park Service in the early 2000s, after which its buildings were removed and the site reopened to the public as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve.

The valley that stayed exclusive

That history set the tone for what followed. Wyoming's lack of a state income tax, the valley's limited buildable land hemmed in by national park and forest on nearly every side, and its distance from a major hub airport have combined to keep Jackson Hole small and expensive rather than sprawling. Harrison Ford has owned a working ranch in the valley since the 1980s, and Dick Cheney has kept a home there since his time as vice president, two of the more publicly documented names on an otherwise determinedly private resident list.

Where old money spends its time

Teton Village and the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort anchor the valley's ski season, while summer draws the ranch crowd to fly-fishing on the Snake River and hiking trails through the park Rockefeller helped create. Jackson's town square, with its elk-antler arches, remains the valley's only real commercial hub, a deliberate contrast to the resort towns that grew up unchecked elsewhere in the Rockies.

Traveller tips

• Jackson Hole Airport is the only commercial airport located inside a national park in the US, with direct flights from several major American cities seasonally.
• The Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve, the former Rockefeller family ranch site, is open to the public with a visitor centre and hiking trails around Phelps Lake.
• Summer and winter are the valley's peak seasons; spring and autumn see far fewer visitors and lower rates.
• Grand Teton National Park has no entrance gate on its northern boundary with Yellowstone, so a single park pass covers both if visiting on the same trip.