The Cloudveil, Autograph Collection

The Cloudveil, Autograph Collection

Arriving in Jackson, Wyoming, ten miles south of the airport, you come into a town whose centre is a single block of lawn framed by elk antler arches, and The Cloudveil, which opened on 26 May 2021, is the only hotel on it, occupying the Center Street corner where the Jackson State Bank and Trust, the first bank in the valley, once took deposits from ranchers who came in from the outskirts in the 1950s and 1960s. Town zoning forbids lodging on the square itself, so the building was assembled in three parts, a lobby and restaurant facing the square, a guest wing set behind it and a third floor at the front carrying the roof terrace, all behind a limestone facade that nods to Jackson Drug, the oldest standing building on the square. CLB Architects, based in Jackson, designed it with TruexCullins of Burlington, Vermont, and IBI Group, and there are 100 rooms and suites under Marriott’s Autograph Collection flag, the name taken from the Cloudveil Dome, a peak of more than 12,000 feet in the Teton Range. It was developed and is managed by The Yarrow Group, whose Eric Dombroski describes a team that arrived in Jackson from elsewhere and never left, with Bruce Grosbety as general manager at opening. The lobby is built around a three-storey granite wall, reclaimed wood ceilings and a front desk cut from a 3,000-pound granite boulder, with signage lettered in the manner of the National Parks, and Dombroski is right that it reads more as a living room than a reception hall. Rooms run from kings to junior suites to the Cloudveil Suite, which has a balcony over the town, in neutral tones borrowed from Wyoming geology, and each has a gas fireplace under a mantel made from reclaimed timber that had been stored in a barn in Laramie. The most memorable thing in the building is the work of the photographer Ryan Sheets, who spent two years filming bears and moose walking toward his lens, footage that now plays on life-sized screens at the end of each corridor and changes with the seasons. Food and drink across the property, room service and the roof included, comes from Gavin Fine and Roger Freedman of the Fine Dining Restaurant Group, who have been cooking in the valley since 2001, and their restaurant here, The Bistro, is a French-American room with a raw bar and an outdoor café on the square. Elsewhere there is a heated outdoor pool and hot tub facing Snow King Mountain, a second-floor breezeway with fireplaces and sofas, a 5,000 square foot roof terrace that hosts morning yoga, a gym with Peloton and Technogym equipment, and a pantry on every floor stocked through the night with granola and La Croix. This is a town hotel in a valley better known for ranches and slopeside lodges, and being in town is what it does best. You walk out of the lobby onto the square and to dinner without a car, Grand Teton National Park is under twenty minutes by road, the south entrance of Yellowstone about an hour, and the hotel works with EcoTour Adventures on guided days in both, with The Bistro packing the picnic. In winter there are free shuttles to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and Snow King. The polish is that of a well-run Marriott with better art than most, and recent reviews praise the staff warmly, though not unanimously, and at rates that start around $450 and pass $1,000 in high season, the occasional lapse gets noticed. It suits couples and friends who want the parks by day and oysters by night, and dog owners, who can bring two. You should not come if you want the solitude of a ranch, ski-in ski-out convenience or the quiet that comes with distance, the square fills with summer crowds under the antler arches, Teton Village is about half an hour away by shuttle, and the Autograph Collection apparatus of loyalty points and brand language will disappoint anyone hoping for an owner-run inn. You should come if you would prefer to be in the middle of Jackson than looking at it from a hillside, if the parks are the reason for the trip and you want a fireplace and a hot tub at the end of each day, and if a hotel on the corner where the valley used to do its banking strikes you as the right place from which to understand the town. The short version: A 100-room Autograph Collection hotel opened in 2021 on the site of Jackson’s first bank, the only hotel on the town’s historic square, designed by CLB Architects and TruexCullins, with a French-American bistro by Gavin Fine and Grand Teton National Park twenty minutes north.