Hills mined for resorts

Published: Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007 12:18 a.m. MST
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Alta: Alta's history goes back much further than when it started its first lift in 1937. Before there were skiers, there were miners. It was back in 1864 that silver was discovered in the canyon by soldiers from Fort Douglas. In 1935, legendary skier/ski jumper Alf Engen stepped into what was then a dusty bowl and proclaimed that this would become one of the greatest ski areas in the world. Two years later, Alta opened with what was then the second operational chairlift in the world.

Brighton: Brighton's story started in 1936 when members of the Alpine Ski Club designed and built a "skier tow" out of half-inch wire rope and an old elevator drum. Brighton became the first tow-serviced ski area in Utah and was one of only a few operating in the nation. Two years later, in 1938, the group built a new T-Bar lift. Seven years after Alta introduced skiers to a chairlift, a group called Brighton Recreations built the first chairlift in Big Cottonwood Canyon in 1946. The single-chair lift accessed the terrain on Mount Millicent. In 1955, Brighton put in the first double chairlift.

Brian Head: The development of Brian Head Resort as a ski area began in 1964. The resort opened for business in January 1965 with a T-bar and warming house. It has been in continuous operation since. Over the years, it has added six chairlifts, two surface lifts and the Giant Steps and Navajo day lodges during the 1980s. To reflect the growing popularity of the area, the town of Brian Head was incorporated in 1975 to provide basic services and an infrastructure to support the growing ski resort. The resort added a lift-served, six-lane snow-tubing park to its offering in 1998.

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Beaver Mountain: Beaver Mountain is probably one of the few resorts left in the country that is completely family owned. The area was founded by Harold "Harry" and Luella Seeholzer back in 1938, who, it was reported, "were looking for a fun winter recreation for their children and friends." A surface tow was soon installed, and Beaver Mountain became a labor of love for the family. Weekends, holidays and spare time were donated to working at the resort. There was little or no money coming in from the resort, so all those working at the time held full-time jobs elsewhere. Among their daily chores, family members side-slipped and boot-packed runs before guests arrived, since machine groomers had yet to be discovered.<

The Canyons: The resort, then called Park City West, opened in 1968 with three double-chair lifts and four rope tows and an uphill capacity of 3,300 skiers per hour. The name change to ParkWest came with the sale of the resort in 1975. Four years later, the resort opened the doors to the ski industry by being the first to allow telemark skiers on its slopes. In 1995, the resort was sold and once again the name was changed — to Wolf Mountain. This was also the year that the resort became the first in Park City to allow snowboarders. The real growth came in 1997, when the American Skiing Company purchased the resort and changed the name, again, to The Canyons.

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Some of Utah's first skiing fans line the finish of a race on City Hill at Snowbasin in the early 1940s. (Special Collections, J Willard Marriott Library, U of U.)
Special Collections, J Willard Marriott Library, U of U.
Some of Utah's first skiing fans line the finish of a race on City Hill at Snowbasin in the early 1940s.