You can now (finally) play this once off-limits Wyoming stunner

Early in your round at Snake River Sporting Club, you pass a wooden cabin about the size of a turnstand. No snacks are on sale here. It’s only the 3rd hole, you don’t need them yet. The cabin is a relic: evidence that homesteaders were here before Tom Weiskopf, before the club, before any of this was given over to golf.

In the early 1800s, this swath of land alongside the Snake River, south of what is now Jackson Hole, Wyo., was fertile ground for the fur trade. Prospectors of other stripes came later, settling down and building infrastructure of all kinds, including that modest wooden cabin. Another century passed before Weiskopf arrived. The former major champion-turned-course architect drew up a routing that became the centerpiece of an exclusive golf club. The course opened in 2006, making it much younger than the cabin. Like the cabin, though, it fits the landscape. It looks as if it’s been there all along.

There was a time when you couldn’t play the course unless you belonged to Snake River Sporting Club, or got invited by a member. But now you can. Last year, the club opened the Sylvan Lodge, an upscale but easy-going retreat that suits the property’s luxe-frontier aesthetic and set aside a block of tee times for guests who stay there. Book a room, and you can play the course.

The club, which is tucked into the folds of the Teton Range, feels remote, far removed from any workaday bustle. But it’s not hard to get to. From Jackson Hole Airport, you drive 40 minutes south, then hang a left onto a bright-red bridge across the Snake River, through a gate and onto a sleepy access road. Along the way, you’re apt to see horses. This property was once a working ranch, and parts of it still are. You’ll also see the river, glinting in the sunlight, in a setting that seems plucked from a Robert Redford film, flowing south into Idaho before connecting with the Columbia River and spilling into the Pacific. On that path, it skirts the length of the course.

Weiskopf’s layout is a tale of two nines. The front side is tree-lined, its fairways framed by cottonwoods, birch and aspen. The back nine is more open, meandering through alpine meadows. Tributaries are a common theme throughout.

Weiskopf, who won the 1973 Open Championship, was also a champion of short par-4s. Sure enough, you come to one on the 2nd hole, which moves downhill over a brow in the fairway toward a green as tousled as those parachutes you tossed in gym class as a kid. Bunkers guard the right side. A bank on the left allows you to feed your tee ball onto the putting surface if you don’t have the length to fly it straight on. Eagle is in play. So is double bogey. That’s another theme throughout. The course provides a world of possibilities. You can be a hero or the hapless opposite.

From the tips, the course measures more than 7,500 yards (on the scorecard, each tee is named after a fly-fishing fly, a nod to another popular activity at the club) but it’s more than a mile above sea level, which means you get the ego boost of golf at elevation — your ball flies farther than it does in thicker air. You also get the beauty of a tee shot soaring against a mountain backdrop. Unless you top it. But that’s on you.

The scenery doesn’t let up. A stream wanders across the short par-3 4th, its wavy green guarded by a sod-walled bunker. A lake looms over the left side of the 11th, the course’s longest hole. A steep grass wall frames the green at the par-3 15th, the hole that runs closest to the river — close enough that you can watch the current from the tee and trace the canyon it’s carved for eons.

That cabin, small and weathered, may slip your mind by the time you make it to 18. But it’s worth a thought. Consider it a measure of how far things have come.

These days, “roughing it” at Snake River means the Sylvan Lodge, which opened last year and gives outside guests a way onto a once off-limits course. The lodge leans into the same luxe-frontier register as the rest of the club — a grand lobby with fireplaces, a rooftop with sweeping views of the Tetons, and The Hub, a concierge operation that handles everything from fly-fishing trips to dinner reservations.

On that front, you’ve got options, too, including the River Room, where a bar serves casual fare cocktails and the dining room deals in refined cuisine. A meal that opens with elk meatballs might move on to a dry-aged New York strip steak or brioche-crusted halibut then close with a selection of house-made sorbets. The menu shifts with the seasons.

Homesteaders never had it so good.