Editor's Note

Photo: Amy Ames

We had a vision for a guide that would celebrate the folks who work hard to make their lives here.

How do you know when something is the best? These days, if we are visiting a new city, most of us turn to the internet to tell us where to get a cup of coffee or a hamburger. Ratings systems and popularity algorithms give us rankings of everything imaginable wherever we are. The results are pretty good—you can generally trust that if a restaurant has a high rating on Yelp it’s going to be decent. But these ratings do lack something fundamental: local knowledge. You’re never going to find that perfect hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot or classic dive bar looking at Google Maps. What you really need is a local to slip you some secret insider tips.

Enter the Best of Jackson Hole competition. Every year since 2007, the Jackson Hole community has cast their votes for their favorite yoga instructors, artists, sandwich joints, and bike shops. Across 120 categories and hundreds of businesses, the cream of the crop rises to the top every time. This year there were over 240,000 votes cast by Jackson locals during the voting period in February. When the dust settled we awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze wins to over 300 businesses and individuals. Chosen by the people for the people: these are the Best of Jackson Hole.

What you are holding in your hands is something completely new. Prior to this year the competition was operated by the local alternative weekly newspaper Planet Jackson Hole, and the results were published as a special edition of the paper once a year. This past summer stewardship of the contest passed to another local source for news: Buckrail. Using Buckrail’s digital mastery, the voting process for Best of Jackson Hole this year was bigger and smoother than ever, and the results now have a permanent online home at the brand-new bestofjacksonhole.com website. But the Buckrail team didn’t want to stop there. They brought me and my experienced magazine editorial and design staff on board to help bring to fruition a Best of Jackson Hole print publication. We had a vision for a different kind of guide to Jackson Hole: one created by and for the locals who live here. A guide that would highlight the hidden gems of the valley, celebrate the folks who work hard to make their lives here, and inspire readers to have experiences that they would never have found through TripAdvisor. We set out to capture a little bit of the magic of living in this place year round and share it with you.

So without further ado, welcome to the Best of Jackson Hole 2019 Locals Guidebook. This is Issue 1 of what will be an annual publication. It is packed to the brim with awards given out by the people who live here, along with stories that expand on the insight of those awards. We have designed this guide to be the starting point of your adventures in Jackson Hole and we hope cracking it open will help you get off the beaten path while visiting the Tetons. Who you see in these pages are our friends and neighbors, companies we’ve worked with and worked for, and people who have contributed enormous amounts to the fabric of Jackson Hole. Highlighted are many of our personal favorite spots; places we’ve had birthday parties, first dates, and wakes. This is a slice of our very own vibrant little community, which is both sustained–and strained by–the popularity of this place. We hope you’ll support these folks while you’re here. It takes the creativity, passion, and the hard work of everyone who lives here to keep making Jackson Hole a great place to visit and the best place to call home.

- Olaus Linn