Jackson Hole

A 'hole,' in mountain-man English, was a high valley ringed by mountains — and the one below the Tetons belonged to Davey Jackson, a trapper who wintered on the shore of the lake that also bears his name. His partner William Sublette called it Jackson's Hole in 1829, and the name outlasted the beaver, the fashion for fur hats, and the entire era that produced it.

The valley had been hunting ground for the Shoshone, Bannock, and Blackfeet long before John Colter — fresh off the Lewis and Clark expedition — probably became the first white man to see it in the winter of 1807. The mountain men followed: Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, Sublette, and Jackson himself ran the traplines that fed the rendezvous. When the beaver were trapped out and silk replaced fur, the trappers vanished and the valley went quiet for a generation — eighteen years, by the historians' count, when almost nobody came at all.

The settlers who finally stayed found a valley too cold and too short-seasoned to farm — which is why it survived. Jackson Hole became dude ranches, then a national monument that locals fought and Congress ratified, then Grand Teton National Park, then the ski resort and the billionaires' retreat it is today. The town of Jackson still has its elk-antler arches on the square; the lake is still named for the trapper who wintered there two hundred years ago.