Constance Anne Kemmerer, (born) commonly known as Connie Kemmerer, is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. Kemmerer serves as a co-owner of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village, Wyoming in the Jackson Hole valley.[1] She has jointly owned the resort with her siblings, Jay and Betty, since 1992. Their family connection to Wyoming dates to the late nineteenth century when their great-grandfather, Mahlon Kemmerer, financed the founding of the Kemmerer Coal Company. Kemmerer, Wyoming, which started as a company town for Kemmerer Coal Company, is home to the first J. C. Penney store.[2]
Kemmerer grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, a community in Millburn, New Jersey. After graduating from the Beard School (now the Morristown-Beard School) in Orange, New Jersey in 1962, she studied at Finch College in Manhattan. Kemmerer earned her master's degree in art history from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.[3] She later earned her Ph.D. in anthropology.
In 2003, Kemmerer co-founded the Integrative Healthcare Foundation, which now goes by the name Teton Wellness Institute. While serving as chair of the Institute, she organized a presentation by adventurist Lori Schneider. On May 23, 2009, Schneider become the first person diagnosed with multiple sclerosis to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth.[4] Kemmerer served as Schneider's climbing partner when they climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the tallest mountain in Africa, in 2011.[5] After working with missionaries in Ethiopia as a young adult, Kemmerer had first climbed the mountain at age 20.[6]
In 1997, Kemmerer jointly purchased the C. M. Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming with Jay and Bettie Kemmerer.[7] The dude ranch is one of the oldest continually operating guest ranches in the U.S. Charles Moore, the son of a trader at Fort Washakie on the Wind River Indian Reservation, started C. M. Ranch in 1927[8] and ran it until the 1950s. C. M. Ranch lies adjacent to Whiskey Mountain, home to the largest wintering Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep herd in North America.[9] The ranch's location in a valley in the Wind River Mountain Range near Shoshone National Forest enables its guests to visit Yellowstone National Park with a short drive by car. The south entrance to the park is about 60 miles from the ranch.