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Less than a two-hour drive from the well-known Jackson Hole Mountain Resort sits the quiet White Pine Ski Area in Pinedale, Wyoming. The Sublette County Chamber of Commerce announced on Facebook that current White Pine Ski Area owner Alan Blackburn has found a buyer to keep the skiers on the slopes for seasons to come. The buyer is Joe Ricketts, a long-time majority owner of the Chicago Cubs, former CEO of TD Ameritrade, and a familiar face to the residents of Sublette County.
Ricketts is already a large landowner in the area and his property spans the first nine miles of the Upper Hoback 23-174. About one year ago, Ricketts bid to build a massive luxury ranch resort in the Upper Hoback’s about midway between Jackson and Pinedale. On March 7, 2023, Sublette County commissioners rejected a conditional use permit that would have granted Ricketts permission to expand the luxury guest ranch operations by nearly triple, from 478 to 1,300 acres, and allow for up to 215 nightly guests.
According to the Cowboy State Daily, longtime board of county commissioner Doug Vickrey said this,
“I would like Mr. Ricketts to know that with all his wealth there are some things in this world money cannot buy, and by God I’m one of them.”
Many residents of the area fear that such expansion of the land could result in heavy tourism as is seen in Jackson. Further back in 2020, Ricketts was also denied an upzone for a 478-acre subsection of his Jackson Fork Ranch in 2020. With help from his agent Morgan Fischer, Ricketts returned with a scaled-back plan to use only 56 acres where he would build a 20-room luxury lodge along with eight cabins of unspecified size.
Shortly after, the town roared in opposition, pleading that their elected officials keep Bondurant and the Upper Hoback rural and agriculture-based. Despite the pushback, Ricketts was granted the zone change reclassifying his property as Recreational Service 1 from Agricultural 1.
Nonetheless, the long history of White Pine Ski Area will continue. First opening in 1939, White Pine Ski Area has seen plenty of change, whether that was in the form of new ownership, changing the name of the ski area, or even closing for over a decade from 1988-1999. The ski area experienced a destructive fire in 2019 when it lost a lodge at the base of the mountain.
Ricketts will take ownership in April after the mountain closes for the season. The history between Ricketts and the community will make the change in ownership interesting to follow. Currently, the mountain sits on 363 acres and has two lifts servicing 29 trails. See the Sublette County Chamber of Commerce press release below for more details.
