FEATURE: Photo Gallery

Neon Nostalgia

A handful of Jackson businesses are still illuminated by historic neon-y signs.

// By katherine wonson
Now attached to Hand Fire Pizza, this sign was installed in 1941 to advertise the Teton Theater. Photo by Bradly J. Boner

Neon is the fifth most abundant element in the universe, but it does not exist on Earth. “It comes from the heavens into the atmosphere,” says Todd Matuszewicz, who’s been a neon “tube bender” since 1987 and is co-president of Save the Signs Colorado. “When we look at the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, we see those cloud nebulae. What you’re seeing is neon lights. So, when we hold a neon tube in our hands, or you see a neon sign, we are seeing our cosmic selves illuminated. Nothing in the world does that. And that’s why people love it.”

But Jackson has had a love-hate relationship with neon. For Matuszewicz, this is to be expected.  According to him, “Neon is cyclical.” As Jackson Hole transitioned from a seasonal dude-ranch destination to a bustling ski and national park gateway community in the decades following World War II, tourism-related business owners gravitated toward any visual marketing that outcompeted neighboring businesses. This competition for visitors’ eyeballs (and, consequently, dollars) coincided with the rise in popularity of neon sign technology; the first neon signs in the U.S. had gone up in 1923 at a car dealership in Los Angeles.

Neon arrived in Jackson in 1932, when Bruce Porter installed a neon sign on the first floor of the Gun Club, one of Jackson’s oldest commercial buildings, advertising his business inside, the Jackson Drug Company. Not everyone liked it. A letter to the editor in the July 14, 1938 Jackson’s Hole Courier asked, “Where is the end? How far is this sign business going to go?”

But, despite detractors, neon signs proliferated in Jackson Hole into the 1960s, with greater and greater creativity, scale, and eye-catching colors. In the 1980s, however, either due to a change in taste or the sheer volume of “loud” signage, neon hit a tipping point. The Jackson Town Council passed an ordinance banning new neon signs.

As mid-century buildings and their signs were demolished or businesses closed, the Vegas Strip look of downtown Jackson quieted … but it hasn’t disappeared. Jackson still has a handful of neon signs, some of which are still actual neon, while others have been retrofitted with LED lights, something that is happening with increasing frequency across the country. Matuszewicz, who admittedly has a strong bias for neon, likens this to working with a cabinet maker (neon) or getting cabinets at Ikea (LED). “To make neon takes a level of skill. It still takes some skill to assemble an Ikea cabinet, but it’s not the same,” he says.

But, if the choice is between a former neon sign disappearing from Jackson’s streets or being retrofitted with LED lights, most people will pick the retrofit, which might lack the glow of actual neon, but still conjures the same feelings of nostalgia. This is reflected in planning regulations that provide certain exemptions for historic signs.

“We’ve been pretty flexible, especially with the old neon, iconic signs,” says Paul Anthony, director of the Town of Jackson’s planning and building department. “I think because of the loss of a lot of the signs over time, it’s at a point where people think they’re cute and they’re visually catching, but there are not so many of them that it’s gaudy.” Here’s a look at the history of some of Jackson’s neon and retrofitted signs.

Cowboy Bar
The illuminated façade of the Cowboy Bar was considered “the trifecta” in the midcentury sign preservation world because it once included neon (the bronco and stockade fence), incandescent (“Cowboy Bar”), and plastic (the marquee sign on either side of the overhang). The rotating bucking bronc, which was installed in 1946, was rumored to have originally been powered by a tractor engine, and the Cowboy Bar letters used to light up in sequence. The sign was painstakingly restored and retrofitted with LEDs in the spring of 2018 by Young Electric Sign Company of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and the work took nearly two months. Photo by Bradly J. Boner
The Virginian motel
The Virginian Motel sign is a true neon sign. Dominating West Broadway Avenue since 1965, it uses a typeface common during Jackson’s neon heyday, giving a nod to the “best of the Old West” that tourists expected. By the 1990s, the sign was in bad shape, and it was easier to retrofit it with LED lights than to restore the original neon. But in 2023, the sign got its neon back thanks to Mick Whittaker of Sager Sign Arts in Idaho Falls, who has been servicing Jackson’s neon (and, more recently, LED) signs since the 1980s. Once Whittaker stripped the sign of its 1990s LEDs, he repainted it and then sent it to the closest neon studio, six hours away in Boise. There, tube benders redid the sign with neon. Whittaker didn’t want to risk shipping the sign, so it was hand-delivered back to Jackson. “Nothing compares to the vibrancy of classic neon,” says Stacey King Brogan, the Virginian Lodge’s general manager. “The LED Neon Flex that was installed in the ’90s was never able to do the design justice.”  Photo by Bradly J. Boner
Teton Gables Motel
A sign has likely stood sentinel over the intersection of Highway 22 and Broadway Avenue since 1954, when Guy Gettings built a one-story 16-unit motel building and a small service station behind the Last Frontier drive-in restaurant (today’s Cutty’s Bar and Grill). A new L-shaped two-story motel building was added in 1971, around the time when the motel changed ownership and name, to Gables Motel. “Neon tells the 100 years of history of our country,” Matuszewicz says. Study the Teton Gables sign, and you can see ghost housings that reveal it once advertised “Gettings Motel” in neon. Photo by Bradly J. Boner
Jackson Drugs
When Bruce Porter moved his drug store and soda fountain from the Gun Club to the northwest corner of the Town Square in 1937, he took his neon sign with him. When Porter first bought the sign, which was Jackson’s first neon sign, in 1932, it was likely an “enamel blank” that was then customized by a local neon sign artist. The stainless-steel details and simple, streamlined design make it one of Jackson’s most high-style signs. The sign remained on the drugstore-soda fountain until 2001, when the building was sold. Thankfully, it wasn’t tossed but stashed in the building’s basement. In 2010, Robert Gill, Porter’s grandson, rediscovered the sign during an inspection that was part of the process of the family buying the building back. In 2018, siblings Jessica, Patrick, and Nikki Gill, Porter’s great-grandchildren, hired Young Electric Sign Company of Idaho Falls to retrofit the sign. The Gills reinstalled the sign shortly after they reopened the space as a restaurant. Photo by Bradly J. Boner
Kudar Motel

Sitting on Cache Street as you enter downtown Jackson from the north, the Kudar Motel features neon on both its sign and building. Because they could be seen from far and signaled welcome lodging, neon-highlighted buildings were common along tourist-traveled routes. The Kudar Auto Tourist Camp was constructed in 1934 and featured a simple, non-neon sign in its early years. It rebranded as the Kudar Log Cabin Lodge in 1940 and likely commissioned the sign still at the motel today before 1955, when its name was changed again, to Kudar Motel. We know the neon sign was commissioned before 1955 because today’s “Kudar Motel” sign has ghost housings—open holes that reveal editing. Once upon a time, these holes had neon tubes entering and/or exiting. Before this sign said “Kudar Motel” it said “Modern Motel.” The sign also features “bullnoses,” rounded pieces on either side of the sign that were a popular design feature in the 1950s and 60s. Bullnoses require a high level of skill because the glass must be bent in three dimensions. Photo by Brian Herbel JH

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