Our Story

A Community Linked To Conservation

Jackson Hole has a long, colorful history as a frontier community surrounded by some of the most expansive and spectacular natural lands on earth. Shooting Star has been sensitively designed to respect and enhance Jackson Hole's vistas, wildlife habitat, open landscapes, and traditional culture of working cattle ranches. The story of Shooting Star is intricately tied to Jackson Hole's culture and natural setting. Carefully planned by a family that has operated one of the valley's largest working ranches for generations, Shooting Star takes its name from the West's brilliant night skies.

How It All Began

In 1929 Stanley and Helen Resor's eleven 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 of land, sight unseen. The entire family arrived in 1930 and began using a few pre-existing cabins and an old barn. To begin expanding the ranch the Resors hired architect Paul Colborn of Connecticut to design a new main house, which is reputed to be the first two story cabin on the west side of the Snake River. Resor had little interest in simply owning land, but instead wanted to create a functioning, sustainable ranch operation. He pulled down the old barn and hired landscape architect Isabelle Pendleton from Harvard to lay out the headquarters complex and an entrance road along Lake Creek.

A Passion For Architecture

In 1936, the Resors built the White Cabin, named because its logs were painted white on the inside. The Cabin was designed by Philip Goodwin, who with Edward Durrell Stone, designed the Museum of Modern Art and was on the board of MOMA with Helen Resor. Soon after, Helen asked architect Mark Peters to design a building in the style of Le Corbusier. The dining room, as it was called, was to span the mill stream, an arm of the Snake River that fed a power turbine. When Helen lost confidence in Peters, she turned to MOMA director Alfred Barr for advice. As a result of a divided MOMA board, which was split between a faction led by Abby Rockefeller who supported Stone and Goodwin for the new MOMA building and a faction led by Barr and Resor who supported Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Helen hired Mies to complete the dining room, his first project in the United States.

The Resors also considered Walter Gropius but settled on Mies as a more practical choice. In 1937, the Resors met Mies in Paris and accompanied him on his first trip to the U.S. Mies stayed in the White Cabin, sharing it with the artist Grant Wood. Mies developed plans for a building that spanned the stream and featured floor-to-ceiling windows. The only concession to the ranch’s western aesthetic was that Mies used wood to clad the building, for the first and only time in his career.

The Snake River Ranch

Over time the ranch, which became known as the Snake River Ranch, evolved into one of the largest deeded ranches in the Jackson Hole area. The ranch buildings are now simple structures and built mostly of log. They are grouped into three complexes comprising headquarters, residential and shop complexes. At first the ranch was run as a cow/calf operation, but now it runs approximately 3,800 steers. The ranch borders Shooting Star on the south and east, and with the Teton Range on the west and to the north, provides an extraordinary backdrop for the Tom Fazio designed golf course.

Location And Design

Shooting Star is located at the base of Teton Village, and is 22 miles from the airport and 12 miles from the town of Jackson. The fundamental concept for the master plan for Shooting Star is that people will always be attracted to quality - whether it be a Tom Fazio core golf course, the incomparable skiing and snowboarding of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, a Class I trout stream, or 1,300 acres of open space. To ensure that this quality endures, Shooting Star has developed architectural and landscape guidelines that allow for creative design while ensuring that each home complements the physical beauty and Western traditions of Jackson Hole.