Sun Valley

In 1935 Averell Harriman, the chairman of the board of the Union Pacific Railroad arranged for Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch to tour the American West and find a locale for a ski resort comparable to St. Moritz, a ski resort in Switzerland. The object was to expand Union Pacific passenger business in the winter months. Harriman also wanted the company to be a constructive force as the nation struggled during the depression years. Schaffgotsch set out and went looking for sunshine and dry powder snow. A traffic agent from Boise, Idaho, took the count to the small town of Ketchum in the Wood River valley. Schaffgotsch wired Harriman that he had found the spot. They named it Sun Valley.

Sun Valley, aside from what it did for Union Pacific ticket sales, made at least two major contributions to American life. It was the first major destination resort based on the winter activity of skiing. Secondly, Sun Valley is home of the world's first chairlifts.

A railroad engineer named Jim Curran invented and designed the chairlift, based on a similar design he had worked out to load banana boats in South America. Before the chairlift, skiers were obliged to climb back up the slopes after each run down. For athletes interested in competition, this may have been good for conditioning, but it stole hours from the actual practice of skiing. The first two lifts took skiers up Dollar Mountain and Proctor Mountain.

The resort was under construction in 1936 and ready to open in December just before Christmas. The snow was late that year, but guests were skiing by New Years Eve. Other buildings in the resort complex went up in 1937, the Opera House and the Challenger Inn, and the Trail Creek Cabin.

By that time, the special international identity of Sun Valley was already taking shape. Claudette Colbert, Robert Young, and Melvin Douglas came to shoot the film "I Met Him in Paris" early in 1937. The same season, the resort hosted the Sun Valley International Open ski race (soon renamed the Harriman Cup race), featuring slalom and downhill contests. Soon, Ernest Hemingway came to Sun Valley to hunt and work on the final draft of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," forever making famous Suite 206 of the Sun Valley Lodge.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy took over the resort and used it as a recuperative hospital for naval personnel wounded in the Pacific theatre, but it reopened to the skiing public in 1946. Rose Kennedy and her children arrived in the winter of 1948 for a ski vacation. Later the Shah of Iran visited, attracted by what he saw in the film, "Sun Valley Serenade." Despite these wealthy visitors, the resort began to expand its clientele to include "ski bums."

Meanwhile, a "housewife in pigtails," Gretchen Fraser, was training for the 1948 Olympics. She became the first American to win any medals, bringing home a silver for combined downhill and slalom and the gold for the special slalom.

The Union Pacific sold the resort to the Janss Corporation in 1964. Janss proceeded to develop the resort for twelve-month activity, adding tennis courts, a swimming pool, golf course, shops, and condominiums.

Ownership has changed again, but the sun still shines on Sun Valley. Ski lifts have gotten better and faster and take skiers to many more slopes than before. The community around Sun Valley has grown, along with the community's art and cultural institutions. And the snow still sets the standard for dry powder in the American West.