Snowmass Village, Colorado:
Jim Snobble, a part-time ski school instructor, had been running a lodge called the Nugget when it was sold leaving him with just a ski school supervisor job. He was worried about what he would do when he rode the lift one day with Art Pfister, who told him they might be looking for some “management depth” and to go talk with Darcy (D.R.C. Brown, president of the Aspen Skiing Corp.). He did, and a week later got a call saying, “You’re done with Ski School: Go to Snowmass and start studying Snowmass.”
Snobble was put in charge of a team to look at the mountain and determine the feasibility of opening a ski area there. He went straight to working at Snowmass, running two powder cat tours with a couple of guides in the early 1960s when there was almost nothing except the old Hoaglund Ranch house and barn, the Faraway Ranch log cabin owned by Loey Ringquist and some hay meadows.
Bill Janss had been buying up property and was interested in trying to develop the mountain, but he wanted to do a joint venture with the Aspen Skiing Co. Janss would develop the base area and commercial properties while Skico would develop the lift facilities, runs and skiing operations.
First Inhabitants
Long before skiers and even settlers discovered Snowmass’ Brush Creek Valley, the Ute Indians hunted, fished, and gathered wild foods here in the summers. The first European / non-natives explored the Elk Mountains as early as 1853, during the Gunnison Survey, but it wasn’t until the Hayden Survey in the 1870s, that the prominent peaks visible from Snowmass were named.
Mount Daly is named after then-president of the National Geographic Society, Augustus Daly, while the triangular Capitol Peak paid tribute to the Washington, D.C., building.
Early Ranching Days
By the 1880s, ranches running sheep and cattle came to occupy the Brush Creek Valley. One of the most prominent ranchers Charles Hoaglund and his family emigrated from Sweden to Aspen during the silver crash and was hired to close down Aspen’s Smuggler mine. They acquired land in Brush Creek to raise cattle, sheep, wheat, and hay. Today, several buildings from his ranch have been incorporated into the renowned Anderson Ranch Arts Center.
Hoaglund’s daughter Hildur was raised on the ranch and attended the community’s one-room school house, which today is known as The Little Red Schoolhouse. The schoolhouse celebrated its centennial in 1994, and still functions as an early childhood learning center today.
A Ski Area Is Born
In 1958, Olympic skier Bill Janss began buying up ranches in the valley with an eye toward emulating the Aspen ski area’s success. By 1961, he owned six ranches at the base of Baldy and Burnt mountains and planned to build a ski area served by a European-style ski community on 3,300 acres. In December of 1967, Snowmass-At-Aspen opened with five chairlifts, 50 miles of ski trails, seven hotels, and six restaurants. Lift tickets cost $6.50. A decade later the town of Snowmass was incorporated, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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