BY KAREN BOSSICK

Learn about the history of the nation’s first destination ski resort when local historian John Lundin offers a virtual presentation “Skiing Sun Valley: A History from Union Pacific to the Holdings.”

The look at America’s “St. Moritz” is based on Lundin’s new book by the same title and will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, by the Hailey Public Library.

In addition to some interesting stories, the book has some wonderful photos, including that of the Owl Creek Cabin, which Sun Valley Resort used as a ski hut for its guests until it was creamed by an avalanche in 1952.

“If there is any one in a more lovely setting than Owl Creek, I haven’t heard of it…You find yourself in a lovely peaceful glade beside a running brook with giant fir trees, old, old trees, hovering protectively over you giving the whole place a kind of warmth and spring-in-winter bloom,” wrote a connoisseur of European ski huts in the Valley Sun.

To take part, RSVP to Kristin.fletcher@haileypubliclibrary.org.

“Sun Valley Resort was built by Union Pacific to recreate European ski ambiance and to encourage train travel during the Great Depression,” commented Kristin Fletcher, the library’s programs and community engagement coordinator. “Notable locals such as Averell Harriman, Dick Durrance, Gretchen Fraser, Stein Ericksen, Warren Miller, Bill Janss and others were had a hand in this remarkably successful enterprise.”

Lundin, a lawyer by trade, has written several history books, including “Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley” and the award-winning “Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass.”

His forefathers moved to Bellevue in 1881, opening a hotel for miners lured to the Wood River Valley by the silver strike.

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