How did your hill get its beginning? Historic stories of ski areas.

[thetrailboss]

Got this idea from dmc's posting about Hunter, so thought we could share some stories about how some of our favorite places got their beginnings with some hard work...back in the olden days when men were men...well...you complete the rest :wink:

I've included how Pats Peak got started below this...

Thats pretty cool. Have any more history on Hunter?

In the 30's there was a ski trail on Colonels Chair Mountain wich is the mountain the ski area is built on.. But it really wasnt used by tourists
So in the 50's the town solicited people in NYC to come and build a ski area..
In the late 50's they got a bunch of Broadway people to invest... they in turn, got the Slutzky family to do the construction and they owned the land too...
It opened in 1960..
After a couple of years the expenses got too much and the "broadway types" bailed and left the area to the Slutzkys... they intended on getting rid of it after a few years... that never happened - they STILL own it..
They used their construction knowledge to install snowmaking everywhere... Build lodges.. Houses, etc...
The Slutzkys knew that they had to keep adding new things every year...

Orville Slutzky still walks around and picks up trash on the floor... He's totally accessable and is avery interesting guy...
Izzy - his brother - is too old to come out anymore..

The kids and grandkids are know at the helm of a lot of the business...

Nice story..I love the book on Killington I think its called a story of mountains and men. Its a great book about how Pres Smith built the mountain starting in 1958. The book has great pics of the first trail and other pics as the mountain grew. Cool book.

Nice to hear about the heritage of our mtns...we should start a thread about it...between all the sad stories of how many times Burke went bankrupt and other stories of Perry Merrill, it would be interesting... :idea:

Hunter reminds me of Pats Peak in that the SAME family that started it now owns and operates it...the Patenaude's...local business folk who were chicken farmers and now own a lumber, concrete, and hardware business along with the ski area and conference center.

In the 1950's the Patenaude boys were good skiers, but got sick of having to drive so far to get to a ski area, so they decided to build their own :idea:

Mind you these guys were like me...idealistic 20-somethings...so this was no easy undertaking. One of them convinced their Dad to by the small hill/mountain just outside Henniker to "log" for the timber (with NO mention of the ski area idea :wink. They scraped together enough $$$ and got to work. Their old man thought they were nuts....but they spent most of the next summer planning and cutting the trails by HAND when they could. The four boys built the original lodge (expanded and moved to where it is now) and their father spent most of his time working inside doing the interior work.

They took out a $200,000 loan to fund the project...this was in 1961-2 I believe...so it was a lot of money for the time :blink: They bought a Mueller Double (still in use as the PEAK double), installed it, as well as a T-Bar and in January they opened. A front-page picture of the ski area is still in the lodge...word was that single shot brought hundreds of folks to the hill in that first season and they're still going today...the boys and their kids now are at the helm...have a good manager who does a he&* of a job. Better than the days when the Patenaudes ran the lifts themselves :roll:

So what are some other ski area founding stories you all have?

 

[Lostone]

There is a bit of info available on Sugarbush.

From Daevious' (a member here) site:
http://daevious.com/bush/

And from the bush website:

http://www.sugarbush.com/summer/mediacenter/history.htm

This used to be the society place... And now I'm here. :blink: :lol:

 

[thetrailboss]

There is a bit of info available on Sugarbush.

From Daevious' (a member here) site:
http://daevious.com/bush/

And from the bush website:

http://www.sugarbush.com/summer/mediacenter/history.htm

This used to be the society place... And now I'm here. :blink: :lol:

Oh yeah...the 'haves' skiing at the Bush. Remember those stories...they used to be the only ones who could actually ski the place :lol:

 

[Lostone]

And now I'm here. :blink:


:lol:

 

[teachski]

Though NOT my area, the history of how Bousquett came into existance is kind of neat. Last summer I did some research for my site and here is what I found:

Acting on an idea that he had after a group of young men carrying skis came knocking at his door asking to use his pastures to practice and learn skiing, Clarence. J. "Clare" Bousquet turned his former mink farm into one of the Northeast’s first ski areas.

Like many others the Great Depression hit Bousquet and his farm hard. The winter of 1932 found Bousquet on the brink of losing his farm. It was a terrible situation for Bousquet and his family. The great stock market crash had left him with no money. His mink farm on Tamarack Road, which had been so promising years earlier had gone bust.

With the Great Depression, the market for mink coats was virtually nonexistent. Things were so tough for Bousquet that a banker even tried to serve an eviction notice. Bousquet refused to vacate his house.

Bousquet’s saviors, a group of young men from the Mount Greylock Ski Club asked him if they could climb up his side hill pasture and slide down. He thought that they were crazy, but saw no real harm in it so he allowed them to. This was well before people worried about insurance liability.

Although they were members of the Mount Greylock Ski Club, it’s existing trail, the Thunderbolt Trail , proved too difficult for them. They were looking for a gentler slope where they could improve their skiing skills and get more than one run a day. Bousquet's pastures were perfect for this.

All that winter, he watched as they climbed up and skied down and noted the fun they were having. He thought, if they were having that much fun there had to be others that would also enjoy it and an idea came to him that could help him save his beloved property. His idea was to turn his two-car garage into a warming hut, built a couple of outhouses and offered a hearty lunch.

Still unsure if this skiing thing was just a passing fad or the beginning of something big, Bousquet decided to go ahead with his plan. He didn’t have much to lose as he was already broke and his mink farm was now just a simple farm with a couple cows and gardens. In the summer of '33 he allowed the ski club boys to clear a trail through the woods above the pasture. This trail had a 750-foot drop. It still stands at the center of Bousquet Ski Area today.

The next winter devotees of the new sport flocked to Bousquet's farm. Though not the first "ski area" in the northeast, Clare Bousquet’s area was the most popular ski area in the East during the 1930s. Woodstock, Vt. -- which installed the first rope tow in 1934 and the mighty Mount Mansfield, where C.V. Starr cut the trails were started at about the same time, but Bousquet’s area was a hill within three hours of New York and Boston by rail. This appealed to many and made the area a popular stop on the ski trains.

Bousquet’s hill may have, in fact, been one of the areas that prompted the running of the ski trains. In the winter of 1934-35 Bousquet was approached by the New Haven and Hartford Railroad with the idea of running a train from Grand Central to Pittsfield. The railroad was seeking to boost ridership in the Depression economy and saw this as a great opportunity for the Bousquet’s as well.

On Feb. 10, 1935, as reported in the Berkshire Eagle nearly 10,000 curious spectators made the trip to watch 447 skiers climb up Bousquet's pasture and ski down.

Bousquet did not charge to use the hill in the days before the rope tow was installed. The money they made on the venture came strictly from the lunches they served in the barn. It’s not known how many hot dogs were sold in the barn that first day, but it seems to have been enough to make him forget all about farming. Thousands of skiers rode the Ski Trains to Bousquet.

Many people learned to ski there. Among those who learned to ski there were Gerald Ford, the nation's first skiing president, writer Lowell Thomas and department store magnate Marshall Field.

Bousquet was not a skier himself. He had suffered a knee injury in the tank corps during World War I that did not allow him to ski. Despite his inability to ski, Bousquet saw to it that both of his sons learned early.

Paul, the younger, got his first pair of skis when he was 2 or 3 and by the time he was 5 he was out there trying to get in as many runs as everyone else. He became a competitive skier, racing for the University of Vermont, and went on to a career in the ski industry, working with Pres Smith to develop the Killington Ski Area in Sherburne, Vt.

For the 1935-36, and Clare Bousquet built two of the rope tows, improving on the Suicide Six design with a rope that resisted twisting and a motor geared down so skiers could grab on more easily. He got the parts to build his rope tows from area junk yards. According to his son Paul, "He knew every junkyard within a 100-mile radius."

One rope tow took skiers halfway up the hill, and they skied over to another that took them the rest of the way. They ran at about 400 feet per minute and could take 1,800 skiers to the top each hour.

The rope tows were quite successful. Bousquet wanted more though so the next year, with the help of engineers from General Electric’s lighting division, he places floodlights on poles to light the runs. Since his area was the first area to offer night skiing, he is credited with inventing night skiing. Unfortunately for Bousquet, the winter of 1938-1939 was terrible. It didn't snow at all that winter and he nearly went broke, again. Somehow he survived and the 1939-40 season was the ski area’s biggest ever.

Bousquet, who has proven to be a successful entrepreneur was also a successful inventor and innovator. To promote his area he got advertisers to pay the cost of the brochure that advertised his ski area. He also solved a problem that many early skiers faced, tired arms and ripped gloves from the rope tows.

In 1939, Bousquet invented and patented the Bousquet Rope Tow Gripper, a nutcracker shaped device attached to a wide belt that attached directly to the rope, leaving the skier’s arms free. Over the next 30 years, more than 500,000 were sold. With skier safety ion mind he also invented a safety gate. This prevented skiers from getting tangled up in the machinery at the top of the hill. Eventually, revenues from his inventions made him more money than the ski area ever did.

Bousquet's little hill was never going to be a big moneymaker. As the ski industry grew skiers demanded faster lifts, steeper trails and more terrain. Bousquet sold his farm, turned ski area in 1956. New York attorney Donald Soviero, purchased the area and ran it making some improvements.

One of the most noted improvements was the development of the world's first artificial snowmaking system. This system has saved the ski industry in a region where it sometimes just doesn't snow. He ran the area from then until 1981 when he sold it to it’s current owner, George Jervas. While some do not always agree with Jervas, he has made Bousquet into a successful area that still provides reasonably priced skiing for local families, day and night.

http://teachski.com/Areas/bousquet/cbousquet.htm

Additional information and a 50's map and patch from "Woody" Bousquett: http://teachski.com/Areas/bousquet/bousquet2.htm

 

[Skimaine4ever]

Big Squaw was originally opened in the early 60's by Scott Paper so there workers would have something to do in the winter. They started with 2 T-bars servicing about 600 vertical ft. One T went halfway and the other went to the top, the small T-bar is still standing today but doesnt run and the big one was taken in out in the early 80's and repalced by a triple chair. I think 68 was the year they decided to develop the rest of the mountain. This almost tripled the vertical from around 600 to 1750. This si also when the summit double was installed and snowmaking on a few trails. And the Big lodge and hotel was built. Since then not much has changed at Big Squaw,the lodge still has the same tables as it did went it was bulit, none of the trails have been widened like at many resorts, they have cut about 7 glades in the past 3 years.

I found a brochure from the 60's or 70's on the internet and will try to find it again and post later.

Also check out this article on Big Squaw, scroll down to the 2nd one. http://www.familyskitrips.com/Pages/weekJanFeb02.htm

 

[Skimaine4ever]

Hers the link to the old brochure http://teachski.com/brochures/Squaw/squaw.htm

 

[djspookman]

A brief History of Smuggler's Notch Resort in VT:

http://www.smuggs.com/pages/universal/corporate/history.php

 

[thetrailboss]

A brief History of Smuggler's Notch Reosrt in VT:

http://www.smuggs.com/pages/universal/corporate/history.php

Awesome! Thanks!

 

[djspookman]

A brief History of Smuggler's Notch Reosrt in VT:

http://www.smuggs.com/pages/universal/corporate/history.php

Awesome! Thanks!

no problem!

dave

 

[K2Trav]

http://www.k2trav.com/2005/history.html History of Sugarloaf

http://www.k2trav.com
K2Trav's Guide to Sugarloaf/USA

 

[Greg]

http://www.k2trav.com/2005/history.html History of Sugarloaf

http://www.k2trav.com
K2Trav's Guide to Sugarloaf/USA

Thanks K2Trav! For you Sugarloaf fans, if you haven't visited K2Trav's site, go! It's the best one out there for da Loaf!

 

[hiroto]

If you are talking about history, you got to check
out the New England Ski Museum at Cannon Mt.

http://www.skimuseum.org/

There aren't much to see on their web site but
their exhibits are pretty amazing.

 

[Lostone]

More on Sugarbush from the Vermont Ski Museum