AMK Ranch: Eagle Pencils and Jackson Lake

The land on the northern shore of Jackson Lake was first homesteaded in eighteen ninety by John Sargent, one of the earliest settlers on the lake. After his death in nineteen thirteen, the property sat idle for more than a decade. Then in nineteen twenty-six, William Johnson, an executive with the Hoover Vacuum Company, bought it as a summer retreat.

When Johnson died in nineteen thirty-one, Alfred Berol, founder of the Eagle Pencil Company, purchased the place. He renamed it AMK Ranch, for the first names of his three family members: Alfred, Madeline, and Kenneth. Through the nineteen thirties and forties, Berol threw elaborate parties here, as many as six to eight per month during the summer.

In nineteen seventy-six, the family sold the property to Grand Teton National Park. Today the University of Wyoming runs AMK Ranch as a field research station, hosting scientists and students where pencil-company royalty once entertained.