Kemmerers donate $5 million to university tourism initiative

JACKSON — Jay and Karen Kemmerer, known for their long tenure owning Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, have donated $5 million to the University of Wyoming to expand an existing tourism research initiative.

Energy has long been Wyoming’s largest industry, which the University of Wyoming has supported with its School of Energy Resources. While the university has had another school dedicated to environmental issues since 1994 — the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources — it has only had a dedicated tourism program since 2021.

The tourism program, dubbed the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Initiative, offers a bachelor’s degree in outdoor recreation and tourism management and a minor in hospitality business management.

Faculty members also work with entities including the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board to research visitation.

The WORTH Initiative has been rebranded as the Jay Kemmerer WORTH Institute.

“We are thrilled to be investing in the important UW priority of supporting Wyoming’s second-largest industry of tourism and outdoor recreation,” the Kemmerers said in a news release. “We are honored to be recognized for our contributions to tourism in Wyoming with the naming of the Jay Kemmerer WORTH Institute.”

The Kemmerers’ $5 million gift, matched by $1 million in state funds, will set up three separate endowments. One will help WORTH faculty secure grants to complete research and contracts with outside entities. Another will assist students seeking internships in Wyoming’s hospitality industry. A third will help the university conduct applied tourism research.

The endowments are expected to generate a continuous source of income for the programs by investing the gift and state money and spending only the interest income annually.

“This helps us become a leader in what we are doing in this region, if not the country,” said Dan McCoy, director of the WORTH Institute. “It allows us to do so much more that we weren’t able to do previously.”

One of those things will be working with a group known as Southwest Wyoming Off-road Trails, which is working to develop more off-highway vehicle, or OHV, trails. The Kemmerers’ gift will help the WORTH Institute send student researchers into the field to study the economic importance of OHVs in the area.

The Kemmerers’ connections to Wyoming date back to the late 1890s, when the family expanded coal mining operations to southwestern Wyoming.

About a century later, Jay Kemmerer and his father, John L. Kemmerer Jr., sold their mining interests. The younger Kemmerer purchased the Jackson Hole Ski Corp. from Paul McCollister, rebranded it as Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and owned it with his wife, Karen, and two sisters, Connie and Betty, until 2023. Now, Jay Kemmerer remains a co-owner along with Eric Macy and Mike Corbat.

“With the Kemmerer family history of being an important part of Wyoming’s energy economy for generations, being able to reinvest that success into growth in tourism has been a fulfilling experience,” the Kemmerers said in a press release. “We are so thankful for UW’s leadership to focus on making Wyoming known for educating its students to have pride in their state and being examples of authentic Western hospitality.”

Kemmerer’s decision to pivot the family business from energy to tourism has been matched with philanthropic contributions in education, and, later, tourism. In 1992, the family started the John L. Kemmerer Jr. Scholarship for high-achieving high school graduates from Kemmerer and Cokeville. In 2017, the Kemmerer Family Foundation also funded the University of Wyoming’s outdoor recreation and tourism management curriculum, which has produced 53 graduates and now has 73 students.

”Even though it’s considered a gift, it’s also considered an investment in Wyoming’s future and diversifying other forms of economic growth and doing so responsibly,” McCoy said of the family’s latest donation.