Wyoming History Preserving the Legacy

A Legacy Worth Preserving

After our forefathers took control of this precious land from the native Americans, the responsibility to preserve the purity of the native Americans' ideal, and the very sacred purpose of these lands, falls to us.

It's our humble promise to you to do everything we can to make your visit to the Lodge at Jackson Fork Ranch more than just a few days of great fishing or horseback riding or an enjoyable, relaxing mountain retreat. We hope to make it an opportunity for you to rediscover and realign your perspective on our world, our place in it, and our responsibility to preserve its treasures.

For centuries before the first explorer, this was the land where many native American tribes roamed and hunted. Being nomadic by nature, they had no concept of “owning” the land that gave them life.

“In wilderness is the preservation of the world.”

– Henry David Thoureau

The History of Little Jackson Hole

The Boots That Came Before Us:

As an adventurous employee of a Missouri fur trading magnate, Jedediah Smith had an unfortunate encounter with a grizzly bear on his way to finding the mother lode of beaver trapping in what is now Wyoming. More than a few historic accounts give him credit as a pioneer in cosmetic surgery.

After getting patched up, Smith led a small group of men who, in the frigid February of 1824, reached the Green River-indeed the mother lode of trapping at the time. He sent one of his men back to St. Louis to give their boss the good news then sent several more southwest from the Green, which led to the Bear River and later to Great Salt Lake. Smith took his remaining six men north, up the Green, to Horse Creek and eventually to the headwaters of the Hoback River.

There they found a small Eden of a valley that came to be known as Jackson's Little Hole in deference to Jackson's Big Hole, the large enclosed valley to the northwest where the Hoback flows into the Snake River (now Jackson Hole). Interestingly, this arm of the Hoback connecting these two Holes was shown as Jackson's Fork on many 19th century maps.

In spite of its idyllic beauty and abundant game, the lure of even better trapping led Jedediah and his men north to claim the larger Jackson's Hole and a valley to the west known as Pierre's Hole, which is now Teton Valley. Fortunately, it was that attraction to bigger and more abundant trapping areas that drew many more fur traders and settlers away from Jackson's Little Hole back then, as it still lures developers away today, leaving "Little Jackson Fork" as breathtakingly beautiful, serene and as rich in wildlife as it was centuries ago.

".. a vain and humorless man, Smith had his scalp sewn back on with needle and thread, then grew his hair long to cover the damaged and missing parts."

– Excerpt from James A. Hanson's "Mountain Men of the Hoback"