Jackson, WY – Following the demise of an effort to turn Wyoming’s first ski area into a non-profit operation, owners of Snow King in Jackson have put the resort up for sale.
The 465-acre resort, which is the town’s biggest private employer, includes a 204-room hotel, conference center and condominium operation along with land and recreational assets. Snow King’s slopes dominate the Jackson landscape, the first sight greeting visitors approaching from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and the Jackson Hole airport.
“My partners and I feel it is the appropriate time to sell the resort,” says the ski area’s current owner, Manuel Lopez. “The property has arrived at a place where a new buyer can continue to successfully expand the operation.”
Efforts have been underway over the past year for the non-profit group Friends of Snow King to take over operation of the ski area, but after negotiations broke down earlier this month Lopez placed the resort up for sale.
Snow King Resort opened as Wyoming’s first ski area in 1939 when $2.95 bought a full day of skiing. Located six blocks from Jackson’s Town Square, Snow King attracts visitors who come for the skiing, snow tubing, horseback rides, Alpine slide, and for a home base to the area’s rich recreational opportunities, as well as for locals who play hockey at Snow King Arena, and hike and ski on their lunch breaks. The much larger skiing at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is just a few miles away in Teton Village.
Snow King overlooks Jackson and the surrounding Teton Mountains and connects the town to more than 3.4 million acres of Bridger-Teton National Forest via a system of trails and chairlifts that extends throughout the resort’s “backyard.” Snow King Holdings controls assets that include water rights and even the town’s cell tower in one enterprise.
“In addition to being the largest private employer in town, we have a large percentage of the development rights in the county and are the largest privately owned lodging enterprise in the state,” says Lopez. “Whoever buys this asset will have a huge influence in the future of Jackson Hole, and by extension, of Wyoming,” he adds.