Migration Economy
The sun is setting behind the Tetons, and I'm watching two migrations unfold. Below, elk move across the valley floor with the quiet certainty of beings following an ancient script. Above, a private jet cuts through the alpenglow, carrying another family of seasonal residents to their mountain sanctuary. Both are right on schedule.
I'm perched in what locals simply call "the hole" – a valley sculpted by glaciers and now being reshaped by an equally relentless force: the endless flow of capital. The kind of wealth that makes Manhattan real estate look like a yard sale in the Midwest.
The elk, of course, couldn't care less about property values or the heated driveways that ensure no one has to suffer the indignity of snow on their way to their private spa. They've been reading these mountains since before we understood what mountains were, following pathways encoded in their DNA by countless generations of survival. When winter sends its first cold whispers across the peaks, they move as they always have, seeking lower ground where the living is marginally less brutal.
The moose, those magnificent bastards, lumber down from the heights with surprising grace, claiming their territories in the willow flats like they own the place – which, until recently, they did. The bison stand their ground, massive and unmovable, giving winter the same defiant stare their ancestors gave to glaciers.
But there's another migration happening here, one that would make Darwin raise an eyebrow over his field notes. The seasonal residents – the ultra-wealthy, the one-percenters, whatever you want to call them – follow their own predictable patterns. When the Hamptons become unbearable, when Aspen gets too scene-y, when their primary residences in whatever gated paradise they call home grow too familiar, they flock here. They're drawn by the promise of pristine wilderness and the comfort of knowing their neighbors are just as comfortable as they are.
The numbers tell a story that would make a Wall Street trader blush. Vail Resorts pulled in $1.42 billion last year. Jackson's piece of that pie? Somewhere between $250 and $500 million. Not bad for a town that began as a refuge for fur trappers and dreamers.
Here's what keeps me up at night, though: the very tools we created to protect this wild place – conservation easements, land trusts, wildlife corridors – have become the architects of exclusion. Take the Walton Ranch deal: 1,800 acres along the Snake River, protected forever from development. Noble? Without question. Beautiful? Absolutely. But it's also made every neighboring property skyrocket to over $80,000 per acre – making a modest 100-acre parcel here worth more than the Baccarat Hotel in Manhattan's crown jewel penthouse. That's right: a patch of protected Wyoming dirt now outvalues a crystal-draped palace 800 feet above Fifth Avenue.
It's a perfect machine, really. We protect the land because we love it. This makes the valley more attractive to those who can afford it, who then invest in more conservation to protect their investment, which makes the place even more exclusive. The cycle continues until the only people who can afford to live here are the ones who drop more on a weekend of heli-skiing than what Small Town America spends on a school.
The real heartbreak? The people who actually make this place work – the guides who can read weather in the clouds, the locals who know which valleys hold the last light, the folks who understand every mood of these mountains – they're being pushed out. These are the ones who understand this place in their bones, who live and breathe its rhythms, who know that true wilderness isn't something you can buy, but something you learn to read like a sacred text.
As darkness settles over the valley, I watch the last elk disappear into the shadows. The lights are coming on in the massive homes that dot the hillsides, most of them empty until the next migration season. The sick irony of Jackson Hole? It's become a pristine wilderness preserve where the wildlife remains but the soul of the place – the people who've long been its stewards – cannot. It's the world's most expensive zoo, where the animals roam free and the humans are the ones in gilded cages.