Flat Creek Ranch was a private retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, now a guest ranch. The original ranch was established by Cal Carrington between 1901 and 1918 at the base of Sheep Mountain, also known as the Sleeping Indian. In 1923 a new owner, socialite and journalist Cissy Patterson built the present structures. The transition from working ranch to vacation retreat foreshadowed a movement of the Jackson Hole economy away from traditional ranching to tourism, which is documented by the Flat Creek Ranch.
Carrington had worked at the Bar B C Dude Ranch from 1912 on, and established Flat Creek as a dude ranch. Patterson appeared in Jackson Hole 1916 as "Countess Gizycka", on the rebound from a failed marriage to a Polish count. The two toured Europe together in 1922. Through Cissy's influence with US Senator Francis E. Warren, Cal obtained a homestead patent on the ranch, then sold it to Cissy for $5000. In 1923 Cissy built seven cabins, a barn and a lodge on the property.
The property is presently owned by journalists Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel. Albright is the son of Cissy's niece Josephine Patterson Albright (daughter of Joseph Medill Patterson), who inherited the property at Cissy's death in 1948, and former husband of Madeleine Albright.
Famous quotes containing the words flat and/or creek:
“Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word “sophisticate” means, very simply, “obscene.” A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a “sophisticate” means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)