Snake River Ranch
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Snake River Ranch
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| Location | Moose Wilson Road, Jackson Hole, Teton County, Wyoming, USA |
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| Nearest city | Jackson, Wyoming |
| Coordinates | 43°33′42″N 110°47′59″W / 43.56167°N 110.79972°WCoordinates: 43°33′42″N 110°47′59″W / 43.56167°N 110.79972°W |
| Built | 1929 |
| NRHP Reference # | 04001089 |
| Added to NRHP | November 26, 2004 |
The Snake River Ranch, near Wilson, Wyoming, is the largest deeded ranch in the Jackson Hole area. The ranch buildings are grouped into three complexes comprising headquarters, residential and shop complexes. The ranch combined two neighboring homesteads and was first owned by advertising executive Stanley B. Resor and his wife, Helen Lansdowne Resor. The Resors used the property as a vacation home, but the ranch was also a full-time, self-sustaining operation.
The ranch could produce its own food, water and electricity. It became significant for the Resors' employment of notable architects, include Mies van der Rohe, and the wide variety of celebrity visitors it attracted. The Snake River Ranch was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
The Resors' primary home was in Greenwich, Connecticut, convenient to the JWT offices in New York City. In 1929 Stanley and Helen's twelve-year-old son Stanley Rogers Resor spent part of the summer in Jackson Hole with the Huyler family, who had bought a ranch on the Snake River. The younger Stanley's enthusiasm about his experience led his father to buy 400 acres (160 ha) of land, sight unseen. The entire family arrived in 1930 to see one pre-existing cabin, a barn, and what would become known as the One-Room Cabin and the Parking Lot Cabin. The family was enthusiastic about the ranch, tempered by Helen's preference for New York. To begin expanding the ranch the Resors hired architect Paul Colborn of New Canaan, Connecticut to design a new main house. Work was well under way by the end of the summer, and Colborn ended up buying land for himself as well, which became known as the Aspen Ranch. The Resor property reputedly had the first flush toilets in Jackson Hole, as well as electricity generated on site.
Stanley Resor became enthusiastic about building a functioning ranch operation. During 1931 Resor established the ranch as a self-sustaining unit. He pulled down the old barn and hired landscape architect Isabelle Pendleton to lay out the headquarters complex. In 1933 a water wheel was added to the side of the ranch's pumphouse, which proved troublesome when it froze in the winter. In 1938 a Fitz turbine was installed in its place, to provide electricity, and was not retired until 1955. In the late 1930s the ranch infrastructure was further developed with the building of the shop complex.
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