STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Did you know that cushions weren’t added to Sun Valley’s chairlifts until the 1960s?!
Bill Janss, who bought Sun Valley Resort from Union Pacific Railroad in 1964, wanted to find ways to make skiing more family-friendly. And adding cushions to take the chill off of the chilly wooden seats was one way he achieved that.
This long-forgotten footnote in Sun Valley history is among the trivia featured in a new exhibit at the Sun Valley Museum of History titled “Champions and Chairlifts: Sun Valley History from the 1930s-2010s.
The new exhibit, curated by Community Library’s Regional History Department, can be seen from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays in Ketchum’s Forest Service Park at First and Washington streets. The free exhibit runs through June 2.
“There’s a lot of demand for ski history from residents and visitors to Sun Valley—people ask about it year round. They love to see the objects of the past and how the equipment and clothes have changed,” said Mary Tyson, who created the exhibit with the help of Christina Jensen, Randy Kemp and Helen Morgus.
The exhibit includes one of the elegant Tyrolean ski uniforms that Sun Valley’s Austrian ski instructors wore when Sun Valley opened during the 1936-37 winter season as America’s first destination ski resort.
“The ski instructors were the superstars during what I think of as the ‘Wow!’ years of Sun Valley,” said Tyson.
The exhibit includes the Head metal skis that revolutionized skiing. The Head Standard skis were called “cheaters” because of how they made turning so much easier. They cost $85—twice that of wooden skis. But by the end of the 1950s half of the skis on the slopes were Head skis.
The exhibit also features one of the early Burton snowboards with a notation “patent pending.” And a Hooger Booger board from 1993.
One of Sondra Van Ert’s racing boards used during the time she competed in snowboarding at the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics, is on display. The deeply cambered wooden board is so heavy you would have thought the Sun Valley racer would have gone on to compete in weightlifting at the Summer Olympics.
Promotional materials dating back to the 1940s includes a price sheet from the 1996-97 season that shows adult lift tickets going for $32 during early and late season and $50 during mid-season. There’s also a metal lift ticket from Sun Valley’s early years.
The exhibit describes how Sun Valley’s glitter waned as the car culture ascended with the building of America’s interstate system following World War II. At the same time, Tyson noted, Averell Harriman who had built Sun Valley as a destination for passenger trains, was busying himself as Secretary of Commerce, governor of New York, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Britain.
Harriman’s brother took over at Union Pacific Railroad and likely did not give Sun Valley the attention it needed, Tyson said.
During the 1960s, Bill Janss began building condominiums.
“Some people didn’t like the idea of condominiums. Now, of course, they provide housing for those without money to afford multi-million dollar homes because they’re small,” said Tyson.
Janss installed Sun Valley’s first snow guns in 1974—they were the most sophisticated guns in the ski world at the time. Not only did they guarantee a Thanksgiving opener most years but they provided a ribbon of snow on Flying Squirrel during the 1976-77 season, which featured one of the worst snow packs on record.
Janss also built the Lookout Restaurant on top of Baldy and opened skiing on the Warm Springs side of the mountain and Seattle Ridge during the 13 years he owned Sun Valley Resort.
The first heli-ski operation in Sun Valley started in 1966, and Sun Valley Adaptive Skiing in 1999.
Sun Valley Owner Earl Holding installed what was then the largest snowmaking system in the world for $8.2 million in 1991.
The exhibit includes posters featuring early films made by Warren Miller, who got his start filming ski movies while living in a trailer in the River Run parking lot. And some of Miller’s cartoons, as well.
Ski movies changed in the 1980s from focusing primarily on racing to featuring skiers going out of bounds, then way out of bounds, as signified by the “Blizzard of Ahhs.”
“The development of the first shaped ski in 1993 and all these other things influenced each other, producing extreme skiing and adventure skiing,” Tyson said. “There were all kinds of different things skiers could do. They didn’t have to be a ski racer. They could be a performer.”