JACKSON — What’s old is new again.

Continuing to make good on a promise to respect the heritage and maintain the character of Jackson’s well-loved motor lodge, new owners of The Virginian took its signage back in time with a retro neon overhaul that gives Broadway a new, old glow.

Earlier this month the lodge replaced the classic sign’s LED Neon Flex lights. Those had taken the place of the sign’s original classic neon. 

Mick Whittaker’s Idaho Falls-based Sager Sign Arts has been servicing similar signs in and around Jackson since the early 1980s, including the Kudar and the Antler Motel, and many other businesses.

And though Whittaker said the LED lighting was prone to shorting out due to moisture, a sense of nostalgia was what motivated the move.

“The new owners were on the fence for a while, but they dug up some old photos of the original sign and wanted to go back to the classic glass neon tubes,” Whittaker said. “A lot of places are going back to that older look of Jackson Hole.”

Virginian General Manager Stacey King Brogan has championed a mid century retro feel for the roadside lodge as she helped usher it into a new era by remodeling and refurnishing all its 165 rooms, just before reopening last winter. Taking the sign back to its roots was icing on the cake this winter.

“We wanted to go all the way back,” Brogan said. “Nothing compares to the vibrancy of classic neon and the LED Neon Flex that was installed in the ’90s was never able to do the design justice. The LED couldn’t replicate the iconic bulb rope border around the oval, which is an important vintage aspect.”

After stripping all the old LED lights off the sign, Whittaker said the entire structure was repainted, something that hadn’t been done in decades. And then it was time to order the glass, an art that is outsourced to one of the few shops that still do it.

“There are no glass blowers who do that kind of work around here anymore,” Whittaker said. “We use folks in Boise and Bozeman now. We’ve been working on this since summer, but those shops have been overwhelmed and getting supplies was tough.”

Nearing the finish line, completion of the historic sign restoration now needs only a couple more pieces of tubing that will serve as borders, an effort that Whittaker believes will be accomplished in about 30 days. Once the glass tubes are bent, the shop then fills it with neon gas and attach the electrodes that light it up. Whittaker will travel to Boise to pick up the final pieces.

“I can’t trust a freight company to haul precious cargo like that,” he said. “Some of the letters up there were 5 or 6 feet of glass tubing. That’s a lot of hours spent bending. This is a project we’re kind of proud of. People recognize that sign as an icon of Jackson Hole.”

In a similar fashion, neon atop the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar located on the downtown Jackson Town Square was restored shortly after change in ownership back in 2018. And the trend to keep things looking authentic is popular among locals as well as the town of Jackson’s Planning and Building Department, which is tasked with enforcing sign codes.

“A lot of the rules we have with regard to signs are helpful for safety reasons, but are also motivated to maintain community character,” said Katelyn Page, associate planner for the town of Jackson.

Current code does not allow signs to exceed 12 feet where The Virginian is located, and neon signs are prohibited, as well as readers boards with moveable lettering like the one located just below The Virginian’s new neon. However, Jackson’s code allows for nonconforming historically significant signs to remain.

“Because we were seeking only to maintain and restore a historically significant non-conforming sign (the sign was last painted in the early ’80s when The Virginian and its sign changed from “motel” to “lodge”), the process was pretty straight forward,” Brogan said. “We committed to completing the maintenance where the sign stands using a color palette that matched the original sign in all her 1960s glory as closely as possible. Because we did not seek historical register status, which is a completely different process, we supplied the Historical Committee with our plans as a courtesy and they had no objections.” The proposal was approved last spring.

The town of Jackson does not keep a comprehensive list of historically significant non-conforming signs, according to Page, who explained that the planning office takes each application on a case-by-case basis, the same process the Cowboy Bar’s sign had to pass through in 2018.

And though the paperwork seemed pretty straightforward to get the Virginian’s sign back to her old charm, the wiring within the sign was not. When Whitakker opened it up, he found a mess of splices the likes of he’d never encountered.

“It had been chopped up, patched over and cobbled into so many different ways,” Whittaker said. “It’s in good shape now.”

Growing up in east Idaho, Whittaker remembers excursions over to Jackson when there wasn’t much going on but The Virginian, a staple in the Wyoming saloon world since Glenn Napierskie established it in 1965, just as Jackson began a slow shift from cowtown to tourist destination.

“We’d head over to Jackson when I was a young and wild crazy kid,” Whittaker said. “Yep, I’ve stayed there and maybe even had a few beers.”

Napierskie named his motor lodge after Owen Wister’s novel, “The Virginian,” commonly considered to have created the basic formulas for all Western genres since.

In one of the novel’s scenes, the protagonist, referred to only as “The Virginian” is at the poker table with the story’s villain:

“It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not speak at once.

Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a--.”