• The Union Pacific Railroad needed to drum up business. To get passengers aboard, they built spur lines to scenic wonders, developed facilities to house tourists, then advertised these splendid places nationwide.
• In 1932, the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, spurred interest in winter sports. Averell Harriman, Union Pacific Railroad chairman, an avid skier, decided the railroad needed a destination ski resort.
• Harriman hired noted Austrian sportsman Count Felix von Schaffgotsch to scout the western U.S. for the perfect site to build a ski resort. Schaffgotsch found that areas in Washington and California were too crowded. Oregon was too rainy, resulting in slush. Lake Tahoe got too many blizzards. Nevada and Utah didn’t get enough snow. Colorado was either too cold, too windy, or had too many trees. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was perfect, but the state highway department refused to keep the road over the pass open in the winter.
• Then a Union Pacific employee mentioned that the railroad spent more money removing snow from the spur leading to Ketchum, Idaho than any other portion of the tracks. Schaffgotsch decided to take a look.
• Ketchum had been a thriving gold mining town, but the population dropped to about 100 when the gold played out. Schaffgotsch was delighted with the area: two large mountains, little wind, lots of sun, and plenty of snow.
• Schaffgotsch, on a ski tour of the valley, skied up to a woman sitting in a corral fence on a ranch and told her, “By this time next year, there will be a thousand people in this valley.” The woman was Roberta Brass, the daughter of the man who owned the ranch that encompassed the valley. The Union Pacific railroad bought that ranch for $4 per acre. The Sun Valley Ski Resort opened for business just eleven months later, on December 21, 1936.
• Sun Valley was billed as “Winter sports under a summer sun.” Railroad bridge designer James Curran remembered seeing conveyor belts lifting bales of bananas into cargo holds of ships using hooks. He redesigned the idea using chairs, creating the world’s first chairlift. Tickets cost 25 cents, equal to $4.50 today.
• Schaffgotsch’s work wasn’t yet done. Harriman asked him to recruit Austria’s best ski instructors. Then he went to Hollywood to offer celebrities free vacations. Harriman knew the publicity would be worth it. Finally, he became a ski instructor at Sun Valley.
• Things went sideways when World War II broke out. Schaffgotsch, an avowed Nazi, joined the German army. Meanwhile, Harriman used his influence to pressure Congress to fight the Nazis. When Schaffgotsch realized he was in over his head, he begged Harriman to hire him again at Sun Valley to get him out of the war. Harriman refused, sending him a curt reply offering him a complimentary room for one month only – but no job. Meanwhile, three of the ski instructors Schaffgotsch recruited were arrested for being Nazis.
• In 1942, Schaffgotsch, now a First Lieutenant, was killed in the war. He was 38. Sun Valley closed for four years until the war ended. A nearby mountain had been named for Schaffgotsch. Harriman ordered that the name be struck from the books.
• Today, Sun Valley sports 17 lifts with a capacity of 21,580 skiers per hour, accessing 120 ski runs. The valley receives about 220 inches (5.6 m) of snow annually and operates the world’s largest automated snowmaking system. Over 2 million people visit each winter. Sun Valley’s name is appropriate because the area receives an average of 250 sunny days yearly. Lift tickets no longer cost a quarter; they now run between $100 and $200 daily.