Archives: Timeline Express Announcements

Owners Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel retire from daily operations and Trey and Shelby Scharp take over as general managers. In their 11th year as managers, Trey and Shelby are excited to continue the tradition of Flat Creek Ranch and to share the beauty and wilderness with you.

Flat Creek Ranch celebrates its tenth year as a dude ranch.

The U.S. Interior Department adds Flat Creek Ranch to the National Register of Historic Places, upon the recommendation of the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Review Board.

The renovation complete, the ranch fully reopens to guests.

The Flat Creek Ranch romance between Cissy and Cal is celebrated in “Petticoat Rules,” a musical comedy that plays at Jackson’s Pink Garter Theater. The play is so successful that it is brought back for return engagements in 2001, 2009 and 2010.

Joe Albright — son of Josephine and grandnephew of Cissy — buys back the ranch from the Land Trust following Josephine’s death. Joe and his wife Marcia Kunstel are so taken by the beauty of Flat Creek and friendliness of Jackson Hole that they move to Wyoming to fix up the ranch, which had fallen into disrepair. They find a conservation-minded contractor, Porgy McClelland, who recruits a crew willing to live part-time at the ranch during a lengthy renovation project. For the next three summers, there wouldn’t be much space for guests.

To guarantee permanent protection, Josephine Albright donates Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust. She puts a permanent conservation easement on the land and includes a proviso that her heirs will have first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price following her death.

Dick Cheney, then Wyoming’s congressman, is invited up to the ranch with his family to go fishing. His wife Lynne Cheney becomes so intrigued with the history of the ranch that she later publishes an article called “The Countess of Flat Creek” in the “Annals of Wyoming,” a scholarly periodical.

Cissy dies, leaving the ranch to her niece Josephine Patterson Albright, who finds it too remote to use. For the next four decades, she leases it out to a succession of trout fishing devotees, keeping an eye on things from her own ranch in nearby Dubois, Wyoming.

Farney Cole, Cissy’s longtime caretaker, is attacked by a large bear while he is walking near a beaver pond on the ranch. Farney is mauled but manages to pick up a log from the beaver dam and club the bear senseless. Bleeding, Farney staggers several miles down the hill to a neighbor’s cabin and survives. Farney’s exploits are celebrated in a full-page spread in a national newspaper supplement. The bear is never found, but a half-century later Farney’s famous club would adorn the wall of Dornan’s tavern in Moose, Wyoming.