Jenny Lake Lodge

Some of the buildings here are more than a century old.

// By maggie theodora

BUILT IN 1922 DURNING the heyday of dude ranches in Jackson Hole, Jenny Lake Lodge predates the national park that today’s visitors come here to see. (Grand Teton National Park wasn’t founded until 1929 and was limited to the peaks themselves until an expansion in 1950.) Still, it was full of guests during its 10-week summer season. In 1923, the first year it welcomed guests, it wasn’t called Jenny Lake Lodge, but the Danny Ranch. Dudes came to the Danny from the East Coast to hike, climb mountains, fish, swim, and ride. Helping ranch founder Tony Grace with chores was also a popular pastime.

Grace established his residence on a 160-acre homestead east of String Lake in October 1922. He built a three-room 30-by-30-foot log house, two large guest cabins, a barn, a storeroom, and an icehouse. In 1923, the ranch, which Grace named after the daughter of his financial backer, welcomed 23 guests. By 1928, enough additional cabins had been built to accommodate 54 guests.

When Grand Teton National Park was established in 1929, Danny Ranch was right outside its eastern boundary. Talk had already been circulating for years about the expansion of Yellowstone National Park to include all of Jackson Hole. With the creation of GTNP, Grace became worried this would become reality. When, in 1930, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Snake River Land Company (read more on page 104) offered Grace and his wife, Viola, $24,000 for the ranch, they took it. The following summer, the couple decamped from Jackson Hole for Montana. 

The ranch buildings were leased for residential use for several years and, by 1934, were in poor condition. There was a fire in the main house in 1935. But, rather than being left to molder, the buildings were renovated and opened as Jenny Lake Ranch in the 1930s. The 30-by-30 log house Grace had built was rehabilitated and made part of a much larger main lodge, which, aside from a 1980s swapping of the dining room and sitting area, is the same main lodge today’s Jenny Lake Lodge guests know.

Jenny Lake Lodge officially opened in 1958. Grace was an honored guest at its opening banquet. While it has been updated and a handful of cabins added since, today’s Jenny Lake Lodge is very similar to the Jenny Lake Lodge of 1958. Ron Neville, the lodge’s general manager since 2019, says that the 1980s main lodge redo was the last major work done to the lodge. “There were four additional guest cabins added in the 1990s,” he says. Three of the guest cabins date from 1922.

Walk into the main lodge today—it is open to non-guests for breakfast (no reservations needed), lunch (reservations recommended), and a five-course dinner (reservations required) daily—and you can still see the walls of Grace’s 1922 log house. “It is amazing that Jenny Lake Lodge exists,” Neville says. “All of the other dude ranches around here were torn down, but here you can walk into the main lodge and see the Danny Ranch’s original main lodge.” Make reservations to stay or eat at Jenny Lake Lodge at gtlc.com/lodges/jenny-lake-lodge or by calling 307/543-3100. JH