^ Scandinavian miners taught locals how to make skis in mining towns across the West.

By the 1850s entire populations of mining towns were using homemade skis to get around in the winter. These skis ranged from eight to twelve feet in length, had simple straps for bindings, and skiers used one long pole for balance, steering, and as a brake. Doctors, clergymen, women, men, and children depended upon these "snowshoes" for transportation in an inhospitable winter environment. Frank A. Bishop was the first recorded skiing mail carrier in California, but John A. Thorenson, known as "Snowshoe Thompson," would become the most well-known. He carried mail ninety miles over the Sierra mountains, from Carson Valley to Placerville, in 1856 and 1857. One contemporary called him "a man who laughs at storms and avalanches and safely walks where others fall and perish." Now Thompson has become part of American ski folklore.

White settlers and miners of all colors rushed to California after 1849; Colorado did not interest them initially. The discovery of gold at Pikes Peak in 1859, however, brought a flood of miners and settlers to the region, where they worked their way into the Rockies in search of valuable ore. Coloradans, like Californians, used "Norwegian snowshoes" to get from here to there. Jim Baker, leader of the Marcy expedition in 1857 during the Mormon War, carved out a pair of skis and used them to find Cochopeta Pass, east of what is now Gunnison. His was the first documented use of skis in Colorado. Early Coloradans learned how to ski from their Scandinavian companions, and traveled to, from, and within isolated towns on their homemade snowshoes. Mailmen logged more miles than most, and became well-known skiers. Colorado's most celebrated early skier was John Dyer, a Methodist minister who established churches in Fairplay, Alma, and Breckenridge in the early 1860s. In 1864 he got a contract to carry mail over Mosquito Pass to Oro City (later known as Leadville), and his winter preaching and mail carrying route led him from Fairplay to Alma, over Mosquito Pass to Oro, down the Arkansas canyon to Granite, over Weston Pass to South Park, and back to Fairplay. Swan Nilson carried mail from Silverton to Ophir (he was buried in a slide on December 23, 1883), Albert Johnson skied the route from Crystal over Shofield Pass to Gothic and Crested Butte, and still others skied from Steamboat to Georgetown, all through the San Juan Mountains, and in the Sawatch Range.

Of course ministers and mail carriers were not the only ones who knew how to ski; residence in an isolated 19th century mining community qualified—and practically required—everyone to ski. Miners, hunters, trappers, doctors, editors, farmers, women, and children all learned how. During the winter of 1879-80 the miners in Irwin (a mining camp near Kebler Pass above Crested Butte) could not get to Crested Butte and had to ski over Ophir Pass to get supplies from a ranch north of Gunnison. Mining town residents also skied in order to run errands and make social visits. One California wedding party skied to Grass Valley for the ceremony, and on to La Porte afterwards. A Mrs. Stevens and her daughter even skied across the Sierra range with a group of men—the locals held a dance in honor of the occasion. Colorado mining town residents were not much different; two skiers once trekked over Independence Pass to Leadville in order to get some oysters to stuff the entree for a Christmas party the Aspen men decided to throw for the few women in camp.

Skiing offered western mountain town residents a necessary means of transportation during often hostile winters; it also helped them pass the time away. Miners took to skiing for fun as well as necessity, and they raced each other down from the mines at night. The older miners at White Pine, Colorado (west of Monarch Pass) had a surprise coming to them when they challenged A.F. Nathan to a race for oysters and cigars down from the diggings on Clover Mountain. Nathan had been practicing secretly and beat them soundly. From these informal contests arose local ski clubs, which organized races and carnivals for everyone. California miners formed the first ski clubs in Onion Valley and La Porte in January of 1861. Local ski clubs fostered competition and rivalries between neighboring camps and raised money for purses to go to the winner. The first documented competition in Colorado happened in 1883, between miners at the Star Mine in Irwin. In 1886 Crested Butte established a ski club, and held what some consider to be the first American ski meet, between Crested Butte and Gunnison ski club racers. During the later 1880s more Colorado miners formed local clubs which often became the base of their winter social lives. The Mount Sneffles Snowshoe Club in Ouray, for instance, combined snacks and alcoholic beverages with their ski meetings.

^ Skiing Miners, c. 1900

Western miners thus skied to get places, and they skied for fun. Early Aspen residents were no different. During the winter snow made it almost impossible to move around without skis; by February of 1880—the first winter white settlers spent in Aspen—Henry Staats measured 52 feet of snow. "In this emergency," Warner Root wrote, "we were thrown upon our own resources and set about to provide something to navigate with." Luckily for them all, two of the town's original settlers—Swedes—introduced Norwegian snowshoes to the community during that first winter of 1879. Root recalled that "tools adapted to the making of snowshoes were scarce in camp but notwithstanding this drawback it was not long till each member of the party had at least two pair." They became experts at making and using these Norwegian snowshoes, he said, quite soon. These silver prospectors, like the gold prospectors in California, increased their chances of staking a claim because they could live in the mountains during winter. Other documented uses of skis during Aspen's early mining years included one man's journey home for Christmas. A blizzard kept W.B. Devereaux's [sic] stage from getting over Independence Pass, so he made a pair of skis from barrel staves and skied home to Aspen. He arrived home, only to spend the holidays in bed from "temporary physical collapse." Two other ambitious early Aspen residents skied over Independence Pass to get oysters for a Christmas party. The most compelling use of skis occurred during the winter of 1899, when probably the worst storm in Colorado's history hit. The people of Hunters Pass, a little mining town about 20 miles southeast of Aspen and now the ghost town of Independence, began to run out of food. In response to the storm's persistence, the residents proceeded to dismantle their homes, build 75 pairs of skis, and escape en masse to the safety of Aspen.

While I have only found parenthetical evidence of a local ski club in Aspen during its silver boom years, Aspen residents probably used their skis for fun as well as for transportation. Even some residents of Hunters Pass treated their escape lightly, and advertised it as a race of the Hunters Pass Tenderfoot Snowshoe Club, for which the entry fee was one ham sandwich. Aspen's local population of Swedes kept the practice of skiing going, if the weather was not reason enough. The 1890 census noted 179 Swedes living in Pitkin County that year; they made up 9% of the population. By 1930, 57 Pitkin County residents had come from Sweden, and 43 had Swedish parents. Hildur Hoaglund Anderson was one of the latter. She was born in Aspen in 1907, and remembered her mother putting on parties for local Swedes when she was a child. She also remembered Ole and Greta Anderson taking her skiing one day in 1920.

Skiing persisted in Aspen, albeit quietly, despite the silver crash of 1893 and the exodus of miners. The few people who stayed in Aspen continually hoped for a resurgence of silver mining, working at the mines that remained open and digging for silver, lead, and zinc. These folks who stayed in town and their children kept skiing. Even those who farmed and ranched along the Roaring Fork Valley and relied on horses and sleighs for winter transportation skied every now and then. Russ Holmes was born on his parents' Owl Creek ranch, and skied there as a kid "straight down on homemade skis," he said. Quite a number of Aspen locals remember skiing during the 1920s and early 1930s. Some even skied to deliver the mail. Fred Willoughby, who moved to Aspen in 1922 where his father operated the Midnight Mine, worked in the mine on weekends and delivered the mail to the camp in Queen's Gulch. His favorite winter route home was through Tourtelotte Park because the mine dumps there were so steep he could go fast enough to make his skis turn. He and his brother Frank used one pole and big homemade skis with toe straps, and they would climb from the Midnight Mine to the Buckhorn Saddle and ski down to town on Aspen Mountain. Other people in town—those less stout of heart than the Willoughby boys—climbed to the upper end of Aspen Street and skied down that slope.

More like the Willoughbys were Frank and John Dolinsek, who were born in Aspen in 1923 and 1925 respectively. They and many other kids who skied before 1936 lived in Aspen's East End. Frank said "I did ski. We tied boards on our feet and went for it. We would slide off a pile of snow from the shed roof. There were some cow paths on Aspen Mountain that we would follow." Jim Snyder, also born in 1923 in Aspen, probably skied in the late 1920s and early 1930s with them. "The neighborhood bunch used to make their own skis," he said. "We'd get in one of these old buildings and rip up the hardwood floor. Of course, in the East End, a lot of us had pigs, and we had a big old feeding tub that they used to cook food for the pigs. My grandmother had a good one. So we'd get these boards and fill that with water, put a fire under it, and steam-curl the end of a board." Snyder would then plane a groove down the middle, make bindings with leather straps and rubber from car inner tubes, and head outside with his friends. These East End Aspen kids skied for fun in a place where miners had once skied for necessity. The skiing legacy of those Aspen miners, the cultural legacy of Swedish immigrants and the reality of long, snowy winters kept people skiing in the years between Aspen's mining boom and its birth as a potential ski resort.

^ A Packard ad demonstrating the growing popularity of skiing in the early 20th century. (Courtesy of The Art of Skiing, Gary H. Schwartz))

While these local kids ransacked houses for wood, tromped up mountains and bombed down them, other more sophisticated Coloradans were also learning how to ski. During the 1910s and the 1920s a number of upper-class Americans were taking up the sport. Alpine skiing, or downhill skiing, took root in Austria and other parts of western Europe during this time period, even becoming part of the Austrian military effort in World War One. Americans vacationing in Europe took up the sport, which emphasized skiing downhill over the more Scandinavian cross-country type skiing and jumping. Other Americans learned to ski because they were outdoor enthusiasts who appreciated wilderness and outdoor exercise. John Muir and Enos Mills, famous for their naturalist observations in California and Colorado, both used skis for winter travel. Still other Americans learned to ski at college, where ski teams were sprouting up in the interest of promoting healthy bodies and healthy minds. All these sorts of Americans tended to be wealthy, urban, and educated, and they helped make skiing a leisure sport for the wealthy. After all, it took money and time to equip oneself and travel to the mountains for fun. National changes during the 1920s furthered skiing's popularity. More people had leisure time than ever before, and cars and trains made mountain landscapes accessible to the masses. European influences of Hannes Schneider's Arlberg school and Arnold Lunn's slalom racing, the growth of college racing teams, and the increasing availability of outdoor excursions, combined to make skiing more and more popular in the United States.

Graduates of college outing clubs and upper-class outdoorspeople started forming clubs, which served as both social clubs and ski clubs. Colorado was no exception—in fact the landscape encouraged such endeavors as it beckoned Denver outdoor enthusiasts to the Rocky Mountains. One of the first and longest lived clubs began in 1912. Members of the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) took winter outings on skis as early as 1915, and held annual "winter sports" trips to Fern and Odessa Lakes in the Rocky Mountain National Park. By the 1920s CMC companion clubs had formed in Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Estes Park. One ski publication noted that "The Colorado Mountain Club, not primarily a ski club, has nevertheless been responsible for much of the early expansion of the skiing idea as a 'vay of life' in Colorado." Leadville, Dillon, and Frisco residents formed ski clubs in the 1910s, but they were probably more closely related to the miner's ski clubs than those of the urban outdoor enthusiasts. Urban ski clubs made outings in the 1920s and 1930s to places including Brook Forest, Chicago Lake, Homewood Park, Nederland and Lake Eldora, Lost Park, and St. Mary's Glacier. In 1930 a group of upper-class Denver ski enthusiasts formed the Arlberg Club, which would help promote Winter Park ski area. By 1936 interest in skiing had grown to the degree that skiers formed the Colorado Winter Sports Council, forerunner to the Rocky Mountain Ski Association. The sports council sponsored competitions in jumping, cross-country, downhill and slalom events.

^ Glenn Beck in Aspen, c. 1930

Colorado ski areas sprouted up in direct response to the demands of these ski clubs. Members of the CMC built a ski jump on Genesee Mountain outside of Denver in 1919. Dr. Menefree Howard, head of the Denver Winter Sports Club, bought ten acres there with a lease on 300 more, where they held meets which attracted thousands of Denverites. Denver skiers had to ride the train to reach Steamboat Springs and the Winter Park area, and the completion of the Moffat Tunnel in 1927 improved access and the popularity of skiing in both of those areas. Berthoud Pass was another area popular with Denver skiers, where a Denver department store (the May Company) financed Colorado's first rope tow in 1937.

Still other Colorado ski areas grew in more isolated towns, where small organizations reminiscent of 19th century miners' clubs encouraged skiing. Hot Sulphur Springs and the not too distant Steamboat Springs had early competitions among Scandinavian residents. Steamboat Springs had its first winter carnival in 1914, which included a ski jumping contest, women's ski races down main street, men's cross-country "challenges," and children's contests. Gunnison was more active in skiing than most towns in the 1920s and 1930s because of its skiing coal miners in nearby Crested Butte and Irwin, and because it was full of restless college students. In 1916 a Western State business professor introduced skiing to an enthusiastic group of locals and students; people have been skiing there ever since.

Aspen's local population did not build their own ski area, probably because the most enthusiastic skiing population there was a bunch of kids from the East End who didn't seem to mind tromping up mountains. Aspen residents did not form their own ski club until outsiders recommended it and helped locals build a place to ski. The term "quiet years" thus applied to Aspen skiing as much as it applied to mining and economic activity in general. Aspen skiing did not blossom in the 1910s or 1920s, furthermore, because Denver skiers could get to Genesee, Berthoud Pass, Winter Park, and Steamboat Springs more easily than they could get to Aspen—where a ski area had yet to be built.

This scenario changed in 1936.