Twelve miles shy of the Teton County line on a 40-acre slice of Fremont County with five mountain springs and a creek, Dubois resident Gary Engman is building a 9,000-square-foot, off-grid mansion from reclaimed antique wood that he’s calling the Cowboy Starship.
The property, which has just listed with luxury real estate brokerage Engel and Volkers for $7.95 million, is surrounded by the Absaroka and Wind River mountain ranges. Construction is expected to finish sometime in August.
Real estate broker Jo Gathercole said the home has already had a number of international callers expressing interest, and it’s not even finished yet.
“It’s got solar, it has diesel generators,” she said. “If you wanted internet, you’d put in a Starlink. It’s completely off-grid luxury.”
Off-grid cabins are not unheard of, especially in Wyoming, Gathercole added. But an off-grid mansion?
“It’s unusual. When I first saw it, it was kind of stunning to think he was doing this. He’s more than a builder. I think of him as an artist,” she said about what Engman’s building. "He’s actually creating art with this home, which makes it very unique in my mind.”
The Cowboy Starship is a 9,000-square-foot mansion getting built 12 miles from Teton County's border in Fremont County. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Gary Engman in the "war room" of the Cowboy Starship he's building. The room will become the master bedroom once the home is completed. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The horses in this photo are grazing near where a mama grizzly and her cubs played the day before. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Why Pay $40 Million To Be In Teton County?
Engman has chosen his canvas for the home with care.
“This is just a spectacular location,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing toward Ramshorn Mountain. “And I think the house looks like a starship that’s landed on top of a Wyoming mountain.”
It’s not the first luxury home Engman, a former seafood magnate, has built, and isn’t likely to be the last.
Engman is betting he can expand the luxury market to this slice of Fremont County with homes priced more favorably when compared to ultra-wealthy Jackson Hole.
Based on his research, Engman believes this is the first large-scale, ultra-luxury spec home built in Fremont County.
The home, Engman said, is comparable to some of the $40 million homes sold in Teton County.
“One of the houses I’m involved with in Jackson is going on the market for $40 million, and it’s the same size as this,” Engman said. “It’s on 15 acres, and not as nice a lot as this 40 acres.
"To me, that house is very nice, but not as nice as this one.”
He gestured toward the corner of a fence line about 1,000 feet from the house and said he’d seen a grizzly bear momma with two cubs eating grass there while he was having lunch Wednesday.
He’s also seen elk, deer, and antelope browsing through the property's surrounding pastures.
“I have more wildlife on my ranch than there is in Yellowstone,” he said with a chuckle. “This is going to, I know this will sell quickly.
"When you look at all the traffic and congestion in Jackson now, and you can buy, for under $10 million, a 40-acre property with a 9,000-square-foot house an hour from the Jackson airport or 20 minutes from the Dubois airport, where you can land any private jet and you save $30 million?”
In his mind, that $30 million covers a private jet and then some, making his property a much more logical deal for those who want to be in or near Jackson Hole.
The view outside of the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Gary Engman points to the area where he saw a mama grizzly bear and cubs playing Wednesday. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The bar is going here, where this plywood is holding tools and other items for construction workers. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Of Ghost Mills And Shipwrecks
His company located in Dubois also supplied the reclaimed, antique lumber that Brush Creek Ranch near Saratoga used to built The Farm, Engman said.
Restoration Lumber Co. produces 2 million to 3 million board feet of reclaimed antique lumber annually and employs 30-40 people.
For the Cowboy Starship, he’s using redwood planks sourced from Napa Valley’s enormous wine vats for the deck, giving their surface a patina of old purples and reddish brown.
Overhead, vintage 1910 heavy trusses salvaged from Bumble Bee’s salmon cannery in Washington span the ceilings, tying the mansion to a working waterfront that no longer exists.
“Everything here has a story, a history,” he said. “It has provenance.”
Not only do they tell a story, they are massively strong. They’ll hold a snow load up to 200 pounds per square foot, Engman said.
The front door, a massive dark brown, is made from old-growth redwood planks transported to the Sea of Cortez more than 150 years ago. They were salvaged from an Indonesian shipwreck.
The double doors to either side are salvaged Yosemite Pine cut to build booming mine towns in California and date to around 1860.
Gold mines, saw mills, cannery operations — Engman only buys wood from places he is sure can’t be saved or that have no historical value.
Dismantling is done surgically, cataloguing each beam, which will later be custom cut to size for its new home.
Inside the Cowboy Starship, he’s bringing special reclaimed items for the interior, including an ornate bar from the old Wyoming bar in Lander, built in 1890. He sees that as a particular centerpiece with its ornately carved wood and mirrored face.
Beyond the bar are picture windows framed with more antique wood, which in turn frame up Ramshorn Mountain like art in a museum. To get to the breathtaking view, Engman wants people to know they’re not just crossing a room. They’re crossing centuries of history.
Wood from old wine vats in California were used to make the deck for the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The entrance to the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The reclaimed wood still has 1800s-era square-head nails. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A decoration over the entrance to the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
For The Love Of History
Engman’s obsession with history tracks back to an old saw mill he bought to reclaim its wood after he decided to pivot from a business selling log cabin kits to buyers in Japan.
“It had a lot of spirit to it,” Engman said. “Something about the spirit of that 150-year-old wood somehow got into my psyche. A lot of these saw mills and salmon canneries were all going out of business. So these huge buildings, built in the 1800s, became available.
“I started buying any of them that I could. I’ve bought enough buildings and antique wood to probably build 1,000 homes of this size.”
Still, he has a code about which buildings he will buy for salvage.
“If a structure can be saved and has any historical value, I will not take it down,” he said. “I very much believe in living history. For instance, if somebody came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this big barn in North Dakota, will you purchase it or I’ll give it to you if y ou take it down?’ I’ve never taken down a barn because I feel that would be destroying our heritage.”
If they still wanted to sell or give it away, he’d work with the owner to put together an organization to raise money to save the barn rather than destroy it.
“I’ve done that probably a dozen times,” he said. “There’ll be a big barn or something that really can be saved, I’ll donate all the material to save it.”
It’s important for future generations to see the past in full living color, Engman said.
“To see and understand what the pioneers and the Native American people went through, just to survive in this country,” he said. “You destroy all the beautiful antique structures and replace them with trailer parks, what is an 18-year-old going to learn from that?”
Engman’s obsession with history doesn’t stop at salvaged timbers. He sits on the board for Fremont County’s museum foundation.
Once the Cowboy Starship is complete, he plans to host a party there as a fundraiser where he expects to raise around $100,000 by donating a weeklong charter on his 110-foot super yacht. He’s also considering a historical display of recent artifacts he found while traveling through Arizona.
From a distance, the Cowboy Starship has been designed to look like a space vessel — after re-entering orbit and burning up the exterior. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Cowboy Starship is surrounded by the Absaroka Mountains and the Wind River Range. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The route to Cowboy Starship is along a remote dirt road, but has awesome views, like this one of Ramshorn Mountain. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
These two horses roam free at the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
From Starship To Stewardship
It’s also important to Engman to build new structures that can become one-of-a-kind legacies, like the Cowboy Starship near Dubois.
That one is actually the second of the “starships.” The first was a 20,000-square-foot mansion Sun Valley at a ski resort in Idaho.
Sun Valley, Engman said, is “probably the most popular ski resort in the United States,” and offers a different kind of setting. There’s world-class skiing, a celebrity cachet, and a market that’s used to ultra-luxury builds.
The success of that project helped set the template for what he’s now doing in Fremont County, but this time he’s betting on something a little different than a crowded ski town.
“That was my last house,” Engman said. “It took me a year and half to finish that one. And then I bought the ranch here (near Dubois) with the idea of building a spec house.
“I don’t need to sell it. Maybe I won’t sell it,” he added, staring down at the corner where the grizzly momma played with her cubs the day before.
Then he flashed a smile and said, “But I probably will, and then I’ll just build another one.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
