Jackson is a delightful town. The town center, consisting of a couple dozen city blocks, is full of high-end shops, restaurants and art galleries. Cowboy cosmopolitan, I’d call it. A mix of traditional western motifs — wood-plank sidewalks, every other bar styling itself a “saloon”, and a dominant architectural style that one can only call log cabin chic — side by side with Japanese restaurants and shops displaying European attire. Sushi and Gucci.
The town is very walkable. Indeed, pedestrians assume an air of command, ignoring crosswalks and crossing streets whenever they want. The automobiles submissively yield to them! Loads of people ride bicycles. One reason is that the Wyoming Department of Transportation builds bike lanes along many of its roads. The busy state highway leading to the hamlet of Wilson, where we’re staying, is parallelled by bike lanes — and people actually ride on them!
The town of Jackson has its share of strip development along Broadway, and you can espy clustered subdivisions off the highway, but the main sights you encounter upon leaving town are mountains, buttes and ranchland. There appears to be a “clear edge,” although whether it was established by zoning or evolved as a result of free-market dynamics is something I have no way of telling.
Not surprisingly, in a town so picturesque and attractive to the rich and super-rich, affordable housing is a problem. Page 3 of the Jackson Hole Daily has a story about an affordable housing project up for review by the Teton County Planning Commission. States the article: “Proponents argued the development would provide cheaper homes for young workers.” (Sound familiar, Virginia?)
My daughter Sara, who works as a restaurant hostess and landscaper, confirms the affordable housing problem. She shares her apartment with three post-college buddies, including one who sacks out in the living room to help offset the rent. The Mexicans, she says, live 11 or 12 to an apartment. (Sound familiar, Virginia?) In addition to the post-college ski bums and Mexicans, the service-sector workforce includes a goodly share of hippies. “I’ve never seen so many people with dreadlocks in one place,” Sara says. A number of hippies have adapted a new form of housing — yurts. Yes, the portable, dome-like structures perfected on the Mongolian plains.
I intend to spend most of my time here hiking, rafting and sight-seeing. But if I have a chance to find out more about the yurts, rest assured that I will. Until then, check out the Colorado Yurt Company’s website.