Our Story
Five generations. One valley.
The Robertsons settled in Jackson Hole in the late 1890s and homesteaded at Hog Island, just south of town. Everything we print comes out of the boxes of photographs that stayed in the family.
Breaking ground with a team.
1901, 1904, 1906. The first generation born here
George Robertson, born in Jackson in 1901. Alexander “Eck” Robertson, born in Jackson in 1904 on the family homestead. Feo Grisamer Robertson, born in 1906.
Feo lived in a log home on Hog Island. She was known for a fun loving character, and in the photograph that survives she is wearing a ranching getup put on for the humor of it, which people who knew her say was normal. She worked and ranched in this valley from the hard-scrabble early 1900s until the mid 1980s. Eighty years in one drainage.
Feo. Hog Island, Wyoming.
1919. Eck builds the road in
At fourteen years old, Eck worked the road crew that cut the original highway through Hoback Canyon. That road is the reason a car could reach Jackson Hole starting in 1919.
He also carried the mail route south of town. Horseback in summer. Snowshoes in winter.
Eck Robertson.
The Wilson ferry. How you crossed before there was a road.
1929. Jack
Jack Robertson, born on the family ranch at Hog Island. He lived his entire life in the valley, ranching and outfitting, and he worked alongside a government survey crew that mapped much of greater Western Wyoming.
Dolores, Jack and Dan.
Snake River
Eck and his son Jack on the bank of the Snake River, showing off the day’s catch. Jack is a boy, holding up one end of the stringer.
Eck and Jack. The day’s catch.
This photograph is the Trout Trucker and the Trout Patch.
1953. Fuzzy
George Robertson found a bull elk calf orphaned near the family place. He raised it alongside his horses and named it Fuzzy. He broke it to harness. In the photograph, George is being pulled across the snow on a small sleigh by a full grown bull elk.
Fuzzy was entered in the Cutter Races on Main Street in Jackson, which is exactly the kind of thing that happened here. He lived eighteen years on the Robertson Ranch.
Some stories sound made up. This one is not.
This photograph is the Fuzzy Trucker and the Fuzzy Patch.
Early 1960s. The Wilson rodeo
Before the rodeo moved into town it ran in Wilson, on the ground behind the Stagecoach Bar. This photograph was taken there. The move happened not long after.
A bullfighter is down in the dirt at arm’s length from two thousand pounds, doing the job that gets the rider home. The rider is a Robertson. Which one, nobody in the family will swear to.
The Wilson rodeo, behind the Stagecoach Bar.
This photograph is the Bull Trucker and the Bull Patch.
1952 and after. Steve
Steve Robertson, born in Jackson in 1952, third generation. Ranching and rodeo were the obvious fit. The photograph shows him at twenty-two, coming out of the chute on a saddle bronc.
He is well into his seventies now and still gets found on horseback checking cattle, driving a team to feed livestock, hunting, and pack tripping.
Some people grow up around it. Others become it.
Steve, out of the chute.
This photograph is the Saddle Bronc Trucker.
Riding out
Loaded pack strings and hunting camps are not a theme here. They are the calendar.
Willow Creek pack trip.
1998. The Gros Ventre
The end of a week-long bighorn sheep hunt in the Gros Ventre Range. Walt Robertson, Neal Robertson, Steve Robertson, Greg Cisco and Mike Robertson are loading up to ride out of the hills.
Third and fourth generation Jackson Hole natives, hunting game on horseback the same way the people who settled this valley in the late 1890s did.
The Gros Ventre. Loaded, and the weather coming.
There is a moment at the end of a hunt when everything goes quiet. The horses are loaded. The weather starts to roll in. And it is time to head out.
This photograph is the Pack Trip Trucker and the Pack Trip Patch.
Today
The photographs get printed instead of framed. Every hat carries one, with the year and the place it was taken.
Not a souvenir. Something real.
