| As the town of Jackson grew into its present incarnation of a tourist trap and Dick Cheney's friends built 10,000 sq ft homes, driving many locals over the pass into Idaho for cheaper homes.
Locals in the region are now being priced out of the Idaho side of the Titons because Jackson Hole has fewer unused tracts of land suitable for 10,000 sq ft homes and currently the land is still comparitively cheaper in Idaho and the view, IMO, is actually more beautiful on the western front of the Tetons.
I am not the first person to mention the crazy real estate market now in SW Idaho. Just before I left on my trip, I read a piece by Barbara Ehrenreich on Huffington Post where she discussed locals being priced out of the market in Driggs and Victor.
The lady sitting next to my wife and I told us she was lucky that she and her husband had bought their home in Victor 10 years ago because they never would have been able to afford it now.
One of my favorite drives in my travels across America is the trip from Jackson to West Yellowstone, MT via the west side of the Tetons and avoiding the more direct but heavily traveled route through Grand Teton and Yellowstone NPs. Not only is the scenery spectacular but I loved the charm of seeing truly rural America.
Driggs and Victor had less than a 1,000 people between them. Tetonia was also extremely small as well. However, I noticed the early trappings of urban sprawl at the foot of the Tetons. Driggs was buidling subdivisions and townhouses. A strip mall materialized in what used to be endless miles of farmland. IMO the town is a Wal-Mart or Target away from being a sanatized version of anywhere USA.
The situation isn't unique to the Jackson Hole area. We met a couple who live in the Sun Valley region and the current bylaws require building a minium of a 3,500 sq ft home, which is bigger than probably 90 percent of all American homes).
The July 9 Jackson Daily contained an article about a housing shortage in the area around Gillette, WY. As the area has grown, there is a lack of affordable housing. The article quotes a couple that said they were lucky to find a trailer to rent for $800 a month!
Pretty soon the people who wait on tourists in Jackson will have to live in Afton,WY or Idaho Falls because that will be the cheapest they will afford.
I heard that Jackson was once a really cool place before the LA crowd found out about it and started turning Jackson Square into some chi-chi shopping outlet with the Coldwater Creek, Eddie Bauer, Et Al.
Another thing I noticed in Jackson was a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Jackson Daily. I suppose that somehow the same people who have no problems hiring a landscaper to tend to their exppansive lawns and flower beds that might employ illegal aliens (like their friend Mitt Romney), or having their pools cleaned, employing a maid or nanny (or both) but somehow complaining about how awful those "Mexicans" are,
IMO these zenophobes are using "mexican" as a perjorative. Not all illegals are Latinos, and not all Latinos are Mexican, but lumping in Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Costa Ricans, and Hondurans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, and Bolivians into one group is demeaning to all.
Where I live in Massachusetts, illegal immigrants tend to be white and generally either Irish or Russian. Somehow overstaying your tourist visa is more morally acceptable to the anti-immigrant crowd than wading the Rio Grande.
My point is that the West is changing. Sometimes the change is rapid like the real esate boom. Sometimes it is glacial (pun intended) like the slow growth of the Teton Range. That slow pace could also reflect how long it takes to change zenophobic views in the region.
In that vein, the politics of the area are changing. Montana seems ready to go completely Blue should Denny Rehnberg lose his Congressional seat. Wyoming has a Dem. governor and Gary Trauner came close to winning a seat in Congress in 2006.
Political change seems slower in Idaho and Wyoming but it will come within the next 20 years. By then, Driggs and Victor will look like the shopping malls and big box retailers that have sprouted up in the past 20 years. |
