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Union Pacific Railroad's Averell Harriman had a bold vision to restore rail passenger traffic decimated by the Great Depression: create ski tourism in Idaho's remote Wood River Valley. A $1.5 million investment opened Sun Valley in December 1936 with a lavish lodge, luxury shopping, Austrian ski instructors and extensive backcountry skiing. Prestigious tournaments featured the world's best skiers. Chairlifts invented by Union Pacific engineers serviced skiers quickly and comfortably. Ski instructor and filmmaker Otto Lang recalled that seemingly overnight, it became "a magnet for the 'beautiful people,' a meeting place for movie stars and moguls, chairmen and captains of industry, Greek shipping tycoons, and peripatetic playboys--and playgirls--of the international social set." After World War II and Harriman's departure, Union Pacific's willingness to pay the $500,000 yearly subsidy waned. Bill Janss purchased it in 1964 and reimagined it as a year-round resort but lacked the capital for growth. Sinclair Oil owners Earl and Carol Holding acquired it in 1977, revitalizing it into a premier resort with international status. Award-winning ski historian John W. Lundin celebrates America's first destination ski resort using unpublished Union Pacific documents, oral histories, contemporaneous accounts and more than 150 historic images.
Sun Valley and Ketchum are in Idaho's Wood River Valley, gateway to backcountry and wilderness areas. Settlers first arrived in the early 1880s, attracted by a silver rush. In 1883, the railroad connected the valley to the world beyond its borders and brought in outside capital. During the silver depression of the 1890s, mining was replaced by sheep raising, and the area later shipped more sheep than anywhere except Australia. In 1936, during the Great Depression, Union Pacific board chairman Averell Harriman built Sun Valley, the country's first destination ski resort, spending $2.5 million in two years ($45 million today). Sun Valley offered a lavish lifestyle, a luxurious lodge, Austrian ski instructors, and chairlifts invented by Union Pacific engineers. Known as America's St. Moritz, it was a magnet for beautiful people and serious skiers. It had a monopoly on grandeur for decades and influenced ski areas that developed later. Subsequent owners Bill Janss and the Holding family expanded and improved Sun Valley, making it one of the world's premier year-round resorts.
Ski jumping, once Washington's most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early twentieth century. It began at Spokane's Browne's Mountain and Seattle's Queen Anne Hill, moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world's best jumpers--Birger and Sigurd Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records here in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth's last tournament in 1978. Lawyer, historian and award-winning author John W. Lundin re-creates the excitement of this nearly forgotten ski jumping heritage.
Skiing Heritage is a quarterly Journal of original, entertaining, and informative feature articles on skiing history. Published by the International Skiing History Association, its contents support ISHA's mission "to preserve skiing history and to increase awareness of the sport's heritage."
Sun Valley "style" has emerged out of the melding of the extraordinarily beautiful scenery of the area, a love of outdoor living and recreation, and the unavoidable influence of the chic movie stars and millionaires who call it home. Sun Valley Architecture and Interiors exemplifies a blend of simple elegance and a refreshingly unpretentious spirit that permeates this Idaho paradise--and that spirit has profound effect on the lives and homes of its people.
Relive the exciting early days of skiing when Snoqualmie Pass was the epicenter of the sport. Ski jumping tournaments attracted world-class competitors to Cle Elum, Beaver Lake on the Summit and the Milwaukee Ski Bowl. The Mountaineers' twenty-mile race from Snoqualmie to Stampede Pass, dubbed "the world's longest and hardest race," was a pinnacle of cross-country skiing. Alpine skiing began in private ski clubs and expanded in 1934 with the country's first municipal ski area, known as the Seattle Municipal Ski Park. And the sport peaked when the Milwaukee Ski Bowl at Hyak opened in 1938. With train access, a modern ski lodge, an overhead cable lift and free ski lessons from the Seattle Times, the Ski Bowl revolutionized local skiing. Lawyer and local ski historian John W. Lundin follows the historic tracks through the genesis of American skiing.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Sun Valley's founding, respected journalist, distinguished television executive, and renowned raconteur Van Gordon Sauter tells the remarkable story of the transformation of a remote Idaho mountain valley into America's first luxury ski resort and, eventually, one of the country's most beloved year-round vacation retreats. His fascinating anecdotal history is constructed around the personal passions and signal contributions of the resort's three successive owners: New York aristocrat and Union Pacific Railroad chairman Averell Harriman, Los Angeles land developer and Olympic skier Bill Janss, and self-made Salt Lake City oil man and hotel magnate Earl Holding. Sauter lavishes special attention on recounting how Harriman's founding vision was, with breathtaking alacrity over eleven months in 1936, translated into the unique, opulent, and acclaimed reality that formed the enduring base for the spectacular resort we know today.Splendidly endowed by both nature and culture, Sun Valley and its environs are surrounded by four magnificent mountain ranges (one incorporating Bald Mountain, regarded by many as the premier ski mountain in the world) that are watered by four diverse, revered fishing streams, their beauty protected forever by virtue of their abiding largely on federal lands. It possesses a colorful history that includes Native Americans, fur trappers, late-19th century miners and railroaders, early-20th century sheep barons, and, since the 1930's, a low key but glamorous life that has drawn not only the top European and domestic figures in the sport of skiing but also the rich, the celebrated, and the accomplished-among them Ernest Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe, the founders of Facebook and Microsoft, and the author of this book's foreword, Clint Eastwood, to name a few-to this exceptional place. Complementing Sauter's lively text is an offering of stunning vintage and contemporary images, many of them fresh to print, that capture the landscape, the history, and the individuals that have and continue to make Sun Valley an American original.
It was a cold, "windless, blue sky day" in the fall of 1939 near Silver Creek--a blue-ribbon trout stream south of Sun Valley. Ernest Hemingway flushed three mallards and got each duck with three pulls. He spent the morning working on his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Local hunting guide Bud Purdy attested, "You could have given him a million dollars and he wouldn't have been any happier." Educator Phil Huss delves into previously unpublished stories about Hemingway's adventures in Idaho, with each chapter focusing on one principle of the author's "Heroic Code." Huss interweaves how both local stories and passages from the luminary's works embody each principle. Readers will appreciate Hemingway's affinity for Idaho and his passion for principles that all would do well to follow.
The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders—and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control. Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may be said to outweigh the benefits and be a devil's bargain in the making. Hal Rothman examines the effect of twentieth-century tourism on the West and exposes that industry's darker side. He tells how tourism evolved from Grand Canyon rail trips to Sun Valley ski weekends and Disneyland vacations, and how the post-World War II boom in air travel and luxury hotels capitalized on a surge in discretionary income for many Americans, combined with newfound leisure time. From major destinations like Las Vegas to revitalized towns like Aspen and Moab, Rothman reveals how the introduction of tourism into a community may seem innocuous, but residents gradually realize, as they seek to preserve the authenticity of their communities, that decision-making power has subtly shifted from the community itself to the newly arrived corporate financiers. And because tourism often results in a redistribution of wealth and power to "outsiders," observes Rothman, it represents a new form of colonialism for the region. By depicting the nature of tourism in the American West through true stories of places and individuals that have felt its grasp, Rothman doesn't just document the effects of tourism but provides us with an enlightened explanation of the shape these changes take. Deftly balancing historical perspective with an eye for what's happening in the region right now, his book sets new standards for the study of tourism and is one that no citizen of the West whose life is touched by that industry can afford to ignore.