America’s richest county doesn’t look the part.
In Teton County, billionaires queue for coffee in faded denim and scuffed boots driving aging Ford pickups.
They put on trucker hats and walk their dogs down snow-dusted sidewalks beneath the elk-antler arches of Jackson’s town square.
But behind the flannel and four-wheel drives is staggering wealth – with some of them worth billions of dollars.
In this rugged stretch of northwest Wyoming, framed by the Tetons and the Snake River, America’s new gilded age has found its quiet capital.
The county is now the richest in the United States on a per-capita basis. Yet unlike Palm Beach or the Hamptons, this is a place where wealth is camouflaged, rather than flaunted.
The man in line at the local coffee shop might just own a private jet parked at Jackson Hole Airport.
The woman in hiking boots could be sitting on a fortune that has multiplied several times over since 2017.
One of the county’s most prominent residents is Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade.
Raised in a Nebraska home without television or air conditioning, Ricketts persuaded friends and family to lend him $12,500 to start what became a discount brokerage firm that helped transform retail investing.
Teton County ranks as the wealthiest county in the United States on a per-capita basis. Pictured Jackson Village with road and mountains in summer season
Wyoming has no state income tax, making it attractive to high-net-worth residents. Pictured, panoramic aerial view of Jackson Hole homes and beautiful mountains on a summer’s morning
The income level in Teton County is roughly 221 times what the bottom 99 percent of households in the county make
By 2015, he was a billionaire. Today, his estimated net worth is roughly $8 billion.
Ricketts has donated to conservation efforts, including research on red squirrels and American beavers, contributed $1 million toward building a hospital, and raised a herd of white bison. But his wealth has also reshaped local debates.
When neighbors resisted a plan to develop his ranch into a luxury resort, objecting to proposals that could have bypassed seasonal construction limits designed to protect wildlife, he later purchased a different $9 million parcel that officials had hoped might become public land.
‘There is not much we can do to rein that in,’ said Luther Propst, a Teton County commissioner.
His story mirrors a larger one.
A New York Times analysis of Federal Reserve and tax data found that the richest Americans saw their net worth grow by 120 percent between 2017 and 2025 – far faster than in the previous decade.
The number of US billionaires jumped by roughly 50 percent over that period, surpassing 900.
The top 1 percent now control an estimated $55.8 trillion in assets – more than the gross domestic product of the United States and China combined.
Joe Ricketts founded TD Ameritrade with $12,500 in seed money borrowed from friends and family. Ricketts’ estimated net worth has grown to roughly $8 billion
In Teton County, many billionaires deliberately blend in by driving pickup trucks, wearing denim and hiking boots, and avoiding outward displays of wealth. Pictured, a row of businesses in downtown Jackson, Wyoming
In downtown Jackson, it’s common for billionaires to patronize local coffee shops, bars and outfitters dressed like everyone else – making it nearly impossible to distinguish ultra-wealthy business titans from everyday customers
Teton County’s estimated total wealth exceeds $14 billion, concentrated among fewer than 10,000 households. Pictured, Delta Lake in Grand Teton National Park
In Teton County, the transformation has been especially stark.
The county’s top 1 percent of households have an estimated average annual income of about $35 million – 221 times that of the bottom 99 percent.
The average single-family home price last year climbed past $7 million.
Economists trace the acceleration to a combination of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and the asset-price surge that followed – compounded by pandemic-era market rebounds.
According to the Brookings Institution, of roughly $2 trillion in projected tax savings over a decade from the 2017 law, more than $750 billion will flow to the richest 1 percent.
Public companies repurchased a record $910 billion in stock in a single year, enriching shareholders.
Federal Reserve data shows the wealthiest 1 percent now own about $25.6 trillion in stocks and mutual funds – roughly the same as the bottom 99 percent combined.
During the pandemic’s market crash in early 2020, many wealthy investors bought assets at depressed prices.
When markets rebounded, the gains were enormous. UBS reported that the world’s billionaires added more than $2 trillion to their wealth in just four months after global shutdowns began.
Remote work untethered executives from traditional financial hubs. Wyoming, with no state income tax and no real estate transfer tax, became irresistible.
The region’s dramatic mountain scenery and protected open space have long attracted wealthy second-home buyers
The county borders Grand Teton National Park, one of the most visited national parks in the country
Much of Teton County’s land is federally owned, limiting large-scale development
In 2024, Wyoming’s conservative Freedom Caucus gained power in the state Legislature.
Lawmakers approved a 25 percent property tax cut on a home’s first $1 million in value and considered legislation that would eliminate property taxes altogether – one of the few ways the state taxes wealth.
‘Those tax dollars covered personnel and other costs that towns could use at schools, police forces, road and parking maintenance crews, and hospitals,’ said Mike Yin, a Democratic state legislator representing Teton County.
Jonathan Schechter, a Jackson town council member, described the fiscal structure bluntly: ‘We sell hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate every day, and it’s not taxed.’
He added: ‘There’s no real-estate transfer tax. We have no income tax, so salaries and wages aren’t taxed. There’s billions of dollars of investment income that residents claim, and none of that is taxed.’
Meanwhile, the Teton County airport commissioned a new private aviation terminal costing about $50 million, largely funded through bonds, as traffic surged.
At presidential inaugural events last year, 11 billionaires worth a combined $1.35 trillion attended, according to Forbes.
Wyoming-based donors were among the contributors to inaugural committees.
Scott Ellis, a former technology executive and member of Patriotic Millionaires, warned of the broader implications.
‘At some point there’s nothing you can spend money on that actually makes your life materially better, so money simply becomes power. The question for us is not how much wealth we want other people to have, but how much power.’
Seasonal tourism drives much of the local service economy, including hospitality and outdoor recreation businesses
The Snake River winds through Teton County’s valley floor shaping its iconic mountain landscape
A solitary wild bison walks in front of the Teton mountain range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Yet despite all the billions circulating, basic services strain.
Dr. Brent Blue, the county coroner, conducts autopsies in a garage once used to park pest-control vehicles. ‘I’m not trying to build a Taj Mahal,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to build a functional facility.’
The county housing director, April Norton, summarized the imbalance: ‘We’ve added 4,300 jobs in the last 10 years, but only added 300 year-round residents.’
Workers commute from Idaho towns like Driggs and Victor, navigating steep mountain passes daily. Some seasonal employees live in their cars.
‘I’ve never seen anything like the explosion of wealth, the influx of wealth in the past five years,’ said Rosie Read, founder of the Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project.
She added that immigrants working as housekeepers, dishwashers and landscapers cannot earn the roughly $150,000 a year needed to live comfortably in the area.
At Jackson Hole High School, locker rooms and bathrooms are not wheelchair accessible. Students eat lunch in hallways because cafeterias are overcrowded. Teachers leave due to high living costs.
Meanwhile, the Jackson Hole Classical Academy, co-founded by the family of the late investor Foster Friess, moved into a 75,000-square-foot campus with new athletic fields and labs.
A new state law could provide families $7,000 per year in taxpayer funds to use outside the public system; the Wyoming Supreme Court is weighing its implementation.
‘Nonprofits can’t be the solution,’ Yin said. ‘They’re funded by the rich, so the rich dictate who gets served.’
Property values in Teton County have surged sharply since 2017, intensifying housing shortages for local workers
Teton County has one of the highest concentrations of investment income per capita in the United States
Grand Teton National Park borders the county, offering sweeping views of the jagged Teton Range and protected wilderness
Despite all this, ostentation remains taboo.
Unlike Palm Beach, where wealth is performed, Jackson’s elite blend in. They meet at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar and ski and fish. They wear denim and drive trucks.
Margot Snowdon, a philanthropist who has lived in the county for nearly 50 years, put it this way: ‘I remember a friend of mine bragging about us having the highest net worth in the country, and I said to him, “You know that means we also have the most inequality.”‘
The county’s estimated wealth exceeds $14 billion, concentrated among fewer than 10,000 households.
‘It means we have so much money that people don’t have to care if they don’t want to,’ Snowdon said.
That tension surfaced during a July rally in Jackson’s town square honoring civil rights leader John Lewis.
‘Let’s Take Care of More Hungry Kids Before Billionaires Get More Tax Cuts.’ one sign read.
Andrew Munz, who grew up in Jackson and is working to revive the Pink Garter Theatre downtown, pays $3,300 a month for a 495-square-foot townhouse.
‘I keep caring and honoring my own love for the place, and my own fight to preserve some semblance of my hometown that, hopefully, these new people will value just as much,’ he said. ‘That has been the biggest fight of the past decade.’
Asked whether he felt he was winning, Munz answered simply, ‘No. I’m losing.’