9400 Macleod Road

Description

Only 26 miles from downtown Jackson, Granite Ranch feels light years away. Or maybe it feels like a leap back to simpler times. On Granite Creek, in the Gros Ventre Mountains and downstream from a waterfall that parts of the 1992 fly-fishing movie A River Runs Through It were filmed, the Ranch is a rare in-holding"private property surrounded by public land"in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Here you can hike, read in front of a fire, fly-fish, see the Milky Way, hunt, sip a cocktail on the porch, and ride horses. A conditional use permit from Teton County allows the Ranch to be operated as a seasonal guest ranch"likely the most unique in Jackson Hole. It has 30,000+ square feet of space between 23 structures dating from the 1930s to 2018 and can sleep 100 people. Wilderness to Call Your Own Granite Ranch is one of only seven private propertiesin-holdingsin Granite Creek in the southern Gros Ventre Mountains, which are part of the 3.4 million acre Bridger-Teton National Forest. These seven properties range in size from 2 to 86 acres. While only 26 miles from downtown Jackson, between road-side wildlife sightings and eight miles of dirt road, plan on the drive from there to Granite Ranch being one hour. Between November 1 and early May, the eight miles of dirtthe final stretch to the Ranchare unplowed and can only be traveled via over-snow vehicles. A snowmobile would be easiest; cross-country skis or a fat bike would make it a workout; dog-sledthere's an outfitter, a former Iditarod racer, who lives and has his kennels at the mouth of Granite Canyon, about where the road stops being plowedwould make for the best story to share with friends. As an in-holding in the BTNF, Granite Ranch is in the middle of some of the wildest land in the Lower 48 States; the BTNF is home to Wyoming's tallest mountain (13,804-foot-tall Gannett Peak), more than 1,000 miles of trails for hiking and horseback riding, seven of the ten largest glaciers in the Lower 48 states outside of Washington state, more than 400 species of mammals and birds, the headwaters of the Green River (the chief tributary to the mighty Colorado River), and three designated wilderness areas. It is one of these wilderness areas, the 285,619-acre Gros Ventre Wilderness, that surrounds Granite Ranch. A designated wilderness area receives the government's highest level of land protection. Camping, fishing, hunting, and hiking are allowed in wilderness areas; not allowed are mining, logging, the construction of roads or buildings, and motorized and mechanized vehicles (bicycles are mechanized and so not allowed). From the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act: "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Granite Ranch is a rare opportunity to live with modern comforts in the middle of a landscape promised to forever be "untrammeled." "Outclassed by the visually more impressive Tetons, some 287 million years their junior, the rounded peaks, immensely gently sloping canyons, steep draws and gullies, and thick forest of the Gros Ventres convey a sense of age, a primeval quality."Jackson Hole Guide, August 7, 1980 A Human Paradise for More than 10,000 Years Archeological evidence reveals that people have hunted and seasonally lived in this area for at least 10,000 years, which isn't surprising given that today it is one of the premiere hunting areas in the state. Wickiups and vision sites have been found in the Gros Ventre Wilderness surrounding Granite Ranch. In 1919, the ranch was homesteaded; while this was the hey-day of dude ranches in Jackson Hole, Dr. William H. McKahan took a different path here and raised cattle and pine martens. In 1938, the ranch got its second steward, Slim Bassett, an avid angler who undoubtedly knew all of the best fishing holes in the many creeks on and