For more than 25 years, New West KnifeWorks has chased one mission: “Make the finest knives in the world.” It isn’t a marketing line. It decides which steel gets bought, how every knife gets made, and who gets hired. And Park City has been part of the story from the start.
Founder Corey Milligan came to Jackson Hole for the mountains: backcountry snowboarding, hunting, fishing, and years guiding rafts. He started making knives in a spare bedroom. For more than 15 years, he showed them at the finest juried art shows in America, from the Smithsonian Craft Show to the Park City Kimball Arts Festival. That’s where the idea of “functional art” was born, and it’s why every New West KnifeWorks store looks like a gallery.
Wonderful photography. Turns out all knives are made in Victor, Idaho.
Every production knife is made in Victor, in a factory that runs 24 hours a day. There is no assembly line. Each individual knife maker takes one knife from steel blank to sharpened edge, then starts the next.
The machines are precise. A VG3 grinder cuts each bevel to one thousandth of an inch. Then human hands take over, softening the spine and sharpening every edge. “There’s so much high-tech precision component modern manufacturing,” Corey says, “but then it also requires this incredible hand skill. You have to have both.”
Victor is on the road to Teton Pass between Idaho Falls and Jackson, WY. On the main drag is a general store called the Emporium. Absolutely phenomenal peanut-butter milkshakes (and huckleberry too). It is also where I bought my first cowboy hat, which I have worn fishing and coaching for 20 years.
You can read the whole thing here…