"We Didn't Think He Was Gonna Build It" : Skiing Hits a Mining Town

"We Didn't Think He Was Gonna Build It": Skiing Hits a Mining Town

By KRISTEN SMART ROGERS

When in 1961 United Park City Mines announced its plans to build a ski resort in Park City, Utah, the town had been through several years of a "long, hard decline." 1 Mining was Park City's only economic engine, and plummeting silver, lead, and zinc prices and labor disputes had reportedly decimated the mines' workforce from 8,000 during the late 1920s to less than 200. Still, hard-rock mining defined the town. Most of the people living in the coal-heated, drafty houses that clung to the mountain slopes were Democrat, pro-union, and proud of their independent lives. They negotiated dirt side roads, strung blasting wire from their homes to Rossie Hill when a television antenna went in, and used Poison Creek" (Silver Creek is the official name) as an open sewer. 2 Ethnically and religiously diverse, the town was nevertheless close-knit, and no economic downturn could quench the community spirit. In the late 1950s the Park City Progressive Association painted houses and created a city park and ball fields. Townspeople lent fierce support to the schools, the award-winning high school band, cultural and civic organizations, and holiday celebrations. 3

By 1960 a few outsiders had begun to discover Park City; in particular, college students loved it as a great place to do some serious, hassle-free partying. Even so, the once-thriving community had made its way into some ghost town guidebooks. ("We've got some damn lively ghosts up here," longtime resident Rhea Hurley said.4) When UPCM announced a future resort, the "ghosts" could only hope that skiing would mean better times. They could not guess what the ski industry would ultimately mean to the place they called home.

The ski resort idea had been simmering for some time. In 1954 UPCM president John Wallace began investigating the recreational potential of the land,5 but some of the residents had already envisioned Park City as a ski town. "Pop" Jenks was one who had the vision. "He would have promoted it [the town] full time if he'd had the chance... He was really happy when things happened here," his daughter said. 6 Fire Chief Bill Berry, who died before the resort materialized, told his children that someday the town would expand all the way to the summit of the mountains-not a bad guess, given the developments of recent years.7

"Most of us who skied realized the possibilities," said longtime skiing enthusiast Mel Fletcher. "We had the mountains, the elevation, they [UPCM] owned the ground, and there were no environmentalists to tell them they couldn't cut a tree down." 8 Bob Burns and Otto Carpenter, both avid skiers, actually opened the door to Park City skiing. In 1944, tired of driving to Alta and Brighton, they decided to lease some ground from UPCM and build their own lift in Frog Valley (now renamed, for marketing purposes, Deer Valley). Otto was a carpenter and Bob was a machinist; between the two they built a lift out of aspens, mining hoist cable, and a used truck motor. Their mom-and-pop resort, Snow Park, mirrored the town itself. Locals worked there or volunteered on the ski patrol in return for free passes and lunch. The city subsidized free lessons for town children. 9 Snow Park had only one short lift, but virgin powder was easy to find, and cooperation and community flourished there. "It was a great group of people. If somebody was cold we saw to it that they got in to get warm," said Fletcher, who organized the ski school. "If somebody needed a ride back to town it was always provided. It was just one big happy family." 10

Meanwhile, Red Droubay, vice president of UPCM, was skiing regularly at Snow Park. "He used to come over...and ski at my place all the time," Otto Carpenter said. "I noticed he got so he was coming over every week.... He'd ski three or four runs.... Finally it dawned on me what was going on; he was after information.... So finally he got the idea of skiing and it was about five or six years later when they built the ski lift up here." 11 Droubay also talked to such locals as Fletcher and to Bud Gasparac, and he took a group by snow cat to the top of Thaynes Canyon to discuss the terrain, ski down, and evaluate possible runs. 12

By the spring of 1961, the mine's plans were out in the open. "We are fighting desperately to stay in business as a mining company in order to protect the jobs and the tax base for both counties [Summit and Wasatch]," Droubay wrote in a letter reprinted in the paper. Mentioning also the needs of the stockholders, he went on, "Our recreational program was designed as a means to help the mining company stay in business." 13 On June 22 UPCM formed a subsidiary, the Park City Land and Recreational Development Company, to develop the resort. A year later, planning was almost complete, and Droubay went to Washington to fish for a loan from the Area Redevelopment Administration. The ARA approved a loan of $1,232,000 on August 30. 14 In essence, the city, which had a total bonding capacity of only $52,000, cosigned on the loan, promising to pay back 10 percent of it if UPCM defaulted. ("And the whole town wasn't worth 10 percent of the loan!" exclaims former Parkite Ed Fraughton.) In September bulldozers and chainsaws began to clear ski runs. 15

Parkites had varying level of enthusiasm for and faith in the project. Most, like Wilma Larremore and her fellow workers in the telephone office, were "very happy about it." Suddenly there was a reason for optimism: the resort offered hope that the town would not completely die. And there would be jobs. "Everyone was very enthusiastic [because] it meant work and a lot of jobs for people," said Fletcher. The local paper predicted "quaint restaurants [serving] fine foods in an atmosphere from all over the world," "bars and lounges [offering] music for dancing or relaxation," and "a gay mixture of challenging sports, leisure, entertainment and social affairs among the charming simplicity of a rustic mountain village." It envisioned "tracks of happy skiers [leading] right into the valley streets," people basking in the "glorious sunshine," skiers sending up plumes of powder, and faces wearing healthy tans—in general, "a play paradise of winter fun."

Not everyone was entirely pleased, however. Before launching into its enthusiastic description of the future, the Park Record briefly mentioned that some "expressed a wish that the betterment might come through mining rather than recreation." Others were cautious, adopting a wait-and-see attitude. "When they talked about the resort, we just thought, 'Geez, that's neat.' But I didn't ever think it would happen," said Jim Santy a longtime bandleader in Park City schools. Whatever the initial reaction, nobody dreamed the change would go as far as it has. 16

Many were unclear even on what the first phase of the resort would entail. When UPCM began to survey the mountain, Harry Topler, the mine's engineer, called Santy to ask him to join the survey crew. "'We're going to put in a gondola,' he said. And I said, 'Where are you going to get all the water?'" Topler paused, nonplussed, then he hastened to correct the misconception: '"No, no, gosh, Jim, it's gonna be on the hill.' I said, 'You're going to put a gondola on the hill? 9 I pictured these rivers of water. None of us knew what a gondola was; we had no idea of what they were really talking about." Santy explains, "When you grow up without much, you really don't know what people are talking about when they talk about grandiose things. It has been that way with each change.... We were hicks." 17

In late 1962 the mine company held meetings in the high school auditorium to explain the plans and urge residents to take advantage of investment opportunities. UPCM official Droubay told people, "If you can hang on, hang on, because your property will be worth a lot of money someday." However, although the opportunities were real, they were sometimes out of reach. A friend of Jim Santy's offered to sell him his store and all its fixtures for $1,000. Santy replied, "Are you kidding?... You may as well have asked for a million." But as speculators moved in, there was this opportunity: "For the first time, somebody could sell their home or their business or whatever, and have money to leave on.... If they wanted to hang on longer, they made more money," said Thelma Uriarte. 18 People sold like "a bunch of Okies getting out of the dust bowl," Jim Santy said. A year after the first meetings, the Record reported, "Park City residents haven't had the money to speculate in this program and have been unable, in many cases to obtain funds to finance new enterprises...and have had to work with what means they had." The paper mentioned disappointments, setbacks, misunderstandings, and the possibility that people might be "pushed out of their holdings." It predicted a "long, hard pull" back to prosperity. 19

Although community members had little money to invest, outsiders began to take advantage of the opportunities. Artist and skier David Chaplin visited the town with a friend in 1962. "We started to cast about to see how we could get in on the ground floor," he says. The two decided to buy the Imperial Hotel, a boardinghouse. Within two years, Chaplin found he did not enjoy being a businessman, so he sold out. He liked living in Park City, though, and he stayed. 20

Chaplin and others who began to buy property in town were only a vanguard of an expected flood. On March 22, 1963, the Park Bulletin, a community newsletter, reported its expectation that in ten years Park City would have a population of 10,000, with almost a million annual visitors. Other predictions "were less extravagant but still rosy. University of Utah economics professor Claron Nelson told residents that the resort opening would create 106 company jobs and 150 indirect jobs in Park City, and he discussed three types of future development: recreational, residential, and light manufacturing and research. The Utah Employment Security Office predicted that the resort would create more than 1,700 new jobs in the state. 21

The mine company and the city kept the momentum of optimism going by staging Bonanza Day on May 11, 1963. Although the day was cold and snowy, the town turned out in force for what was "surely the very finest" parade in Park City history. Besides floats, the high school band, and cars carrying the governor, senators, mining officials, businessmen, and other notables, the parade featured a snow cat, tractor shovel, cement mixers, and a Japanese hiking team from Tokyo. Miss Bonanza and her attendants waved to the crowd. First place went to the ninth grade for their float depicting the old and new Park City.

A groundbreaking ceremony followed at the base of the resort. The owner of the town's Conoco gas station, Tom St. Jeor, dressed as a prospector complete with fake beard and two burros, dumped silver ore onto the future site of the gondola station as miners set off dynamite blasts on Crescent Ridge. Governor George Clyde swung a silver-colored pick, and several speakers waxed eloquent on the future of skiing in Park City as the onlookers shivered miserably. The cold weather did not stop a crowd of 300 from gathering at the park for a brunch of hot coffee, bacon and eggs, hotcakes, and hash browns, served up for a quarter—1890 prices—by men dressed in Gay Nineties style. Square dancing, dinner served by the Park City Lady Elks, and a presentation on the resort and future plans (a golf course, arts center, clubhouse and activities center, picnic sites, swimming pool, and riding stables were projected within two years) finished the day. 22

The next winter, with scanty snow on the ground, the town celebrated the grand opening of the 10,000-acre Treasure Mountains ski area. The 5,700-foot-long Prospector double chairlift, two J-bar tows, and the gondola had been completed; crews had tested the cabins of the 2.5-mile-long gondola, loading them with 800-pound sandbags and sending them on several roundtrips. At the resort opening, a premiere reception, "beautiful dedicatory prayer" by LDS bishop David Loertscher, and music by the high school band were highlights. Bandleader Santy remembers that the students were particularly excited that people from outside Park City were actually taking an interest in the band. The resort offered free gondola rides to the Summit House. The Park Record, no doubt speaking for many awed riders, reported:

The gondola ride is an experience "out of this world" and must be taken to be fully appreciated.

One realizes they are not on a plane, nor a "flying machine" of any sort, and are tempted to feel their shoulder blades to see if wings have sprouted while they are still here on Mother Earth.

The views as one travels ever upward to 9300 feet grow larger and more breath taking, and the scene that spreads out before you from the summit, on Pioneer Ridge is simply marvelous beyond description. 23

The next summer, Lady Bird Johnson visited Park City to see the ski area. The city paved a road to the resort for her entourage. "It was the first paving in this neighborhood," said Wilma Larremore. "They put one-half inch of oil on 8th Street and Norfolk We were a little envious because we didn't get it, [but] it didn't last." In addition, the telephone company had to give up one of its three long-distance lines so there could be a direct hotline to Washington. "It made us mad," said Wilma. But a visit by the president's wife was also exciting, confirming for residents that they were at least approaching the big time. The combined alumni—high school band eagerly went to the airport to play for her. "We were honored she was in town. People were excited about her presence," said Mel Fletcher. The Secret Service asked Fletcher, who was the lieutenant of the Park City unit of the Summit County Jeep Posse, to organize his posse to form a cordon around Lady Bird to watch for anything suspicious. 24

Amid all the hoopla, many realized the importance of planning for the future—but few agreed on how best to do it. Early in the process, architecture professors at the University of Utah had given their students the assignment of making a town plan that "would transform an "old picturesque mining town that has little tourist appeal into an old picturesque mining town that would become a magnet for visitors." The students recommended a good coat of paint on the houses worth saving and demolition of the rest. They also recommended making Main Street into a pedestrian mall (an idea that has continued to resurface from time to time) and building an amphitheater. "The university people...wanted to uncover the 'brook' going through town," remembers Wilma Larremore. "Well, that was our sewer. We had outhouses over it; we weren't allowed to play in it." She says that although the university had some nice plans, "none of it amounted to much." 25

In January 1963 the city, perhaps with prodding from the mine company, formed the Park City Community Development Committee (more often called the Overall Development Committee) to oversee planning, water, sanitation, history and visitor relations, businesses and services, and finances. Chairman David Loertscher, a well-respected community leader, then organized subcommittees, sometimes inviting people from out of town to help. The planning subcommittee included engineer Wayne Pratt, architect Bill Rixey, and Hoke Carney, all newcomers in town. Ed Fraughton, a native son who had moved to Salt Lake City and was establishing himself as a sculptor, also joined the committee. 26

One of the first tasks the committee undertook was a public-opinion survey. The questions, some of which were slanted toward the committee's biases, elicted progressive responses. Some samples, taken from the Park Bulletin, a newsletter put out by the planning committee, include:

Do you think that the old Western mining town flavor should be preserved in Park City? Yes 287. No 39. Undecided 21.

It is quite possible that. ..outside interests will...build a new community on the flat below Park City.... Would you like this?Yes 67. No 224. Undecided 51.

Are you able to invest money into some business venture at the present time? Yes 55. No 244. Undecided 28.

Would you like to see the old style lamp poles which now exist on Main Street remain? Yes 177. No 109. Undecided 64.

Since a street full of neon signs could detract from the old mining town atmosphere, would you like to see neon signs replaced by interesting old style hand lettered signs? Yes 236. No 116. Undecided 82.

Would you like to see the Park Record revitalized and brought back into Park City? Yes 317. No 11. Undecided 21.

Many construction crews will be coming into this area within three months and ski meets are being booked beginning next year. Could you be prepared to rent housing space for visitors soon?Yes 20. No 284. Undecided 29.

Do you think our town should be more of a cultural attraction rather than a carnivallike attraction?Yes 269. No 21. Undecided 48.

Will you as an individual be willing to support and trust the various committees as being adequate representatives, working in your behalf? Yes 256. No 10. Undecided 58. 27

Although the survey results seemed to indicate that the town was behind preservation-oriented planning, right away the committee ran into opposition. Their first major battle was over the old streetlamps on Main Street. In the survey, the question about the streetlamps "was the most specific and the most divisive; apparently, some who supported a mining-town flavor disagreed when it came to the details. Mayor William Sullivan had been working with the state to widen and resurface Main Street, narrow the sidewalks, and put in "ultramodern" light poles, making Main Street the main route when the Guardsman Pass road was completed. The planning committee, convinced that the city would need wide sidewalks for the tourists and that modern poles would damage the street's ambience, -worked with the state to determine if it was feasible to put the traffic on Marsac Avenue instead and to save the old lampposts. They proposed making Main Street a one-way street and installing boardwalk sidewalks. "That was put down quickly," said Ed Fraughton, committee secretary. "The mayor and city [council] felt threatened by our group. They wouldn't accept our recommendations." According to Fraughton, the labor union mentality of the government officials made them distrust whatever the mining company did. Although they had supported the ski area idea, they were not anxious to bend over backward to please UPCM, and they perceived the committee's ideas as the company's. "It was against the fabric of their belief system to do anything to help the company," Fraughton says. The committee lost that battle, and the modern poles went up in 1963. However, Fraughton and his co-preservationists succeeded in saving the old poles from being sent to a salvage yard, storing them behind the fire station. Some years later, in 1977, the city took out the modern lights and put the originals back in. 28

The planning committee held public hearings and set up an office where volunteer engineers and architects drew up plans and designed roads. Its "wide-ranging agenda included design issues, soil and percolation tests, improvements to the sewer and water systems, the collection of historical artifacts for a museum, protection of the cemeteries, and the removal of junk autos. 29 Some residents outside the process grew resentful. Fraughton says that when he was growing up in Park City, delivering papers and working at other odd jobs, people told him that he should leave town and get an education. After high school, he did just that. "But when I came back, they said, "This Fraughton guy, he went to the university and dot a degree, and now he's back trying to tell us what to do.'" He felt that his former neighbors now saw him as an outsider. 30

"We weren't part of [the committee]," says Ted Larremore, who worked in the mine "long enough to get damn near killed." "We were too oldfashioned to be on it. It was made up of what I call carpet-baggers, ones that come in for the spoils." Larremore thought the committee had come in to "tell me how I should live my life, when I kept the damn thing [the town] going." Jim and Carol Santy, on the other hand, "didn't pay too much attention to [the planning]. We were more worried about paying rent." Besides, the committee was talking about preserving the "old flavor" of Park City, and "I didn't worry about keeping the old flavor. I only remember the house I grew up in being cold. There were so many ugly shacks around. I grew up with antiques, and I don't want any antiques in my house now!" "How we suffered in these 'quaint' houses!" echoes Ted Larremore. His wife agrees. "The desire to preserve history—that was the newer people. Those -who were here, we cared about it but we didn't feel we had to keep it." 31

One of the committee's projects was successful and non-divisive. Believing that Park City could be "perhaps the cultural and recreational center of the West," committee members helped put on an art show with fifty-five paintings of Park City done by nineteen of Utah's "foremost professional artists," as the program put it. Chuck and Joan Woodbury donated use of the old LDS First Ward building, which they owned. Volunteers from town cleaned the church basement and staffed the event. "It wasn't a huge event," says Fraughton, "but we tried to start something." Notable was the fact that Park City Union, Local 4262, "gave support and cooperation to make the exhibit possible." 32

There were other signs of support. Once, when Fraughton had written a letter critical of the city to the newspaper, Earl Roseigh, a storekeeper on Main Street, put his arm around Fraughton and said, "That's a great letter. I appreciate what you're trying to do." "That was encouraging to me," Fraughton says. "[Roseigh] was a staunch Democrat with a miner's point of view, but he was seeing the big picture. I thought if we can get a few people like that on our side, we can get some progressive people in office. We started asking questions, making people mad, getting them to talk together," and launched into an effort to win a couple of seats on the city council. "The election divided the town into a two-party community, not Republican/Democrat, but old-timer versus newcomer renegades—We lost." But the election was extremely close. 33

After a year of trying to influence community planning, the frustrated planning committee members called it quits and closed their office. That left the city officials to deal with the proposed developments. Besides the resort, the first big development was the Treasure Mountain Inn, a threestory box-like condominium project proposed for the top of Main Street. Leon Uriarte, -who was on the city council, remembered that when the California-based developer came in with the plans, "We couldn't imagine [it].This guy must be nuts—to come up here and want to build...on Main Street He said, boy there's gonna be some big things happen in Park City and...he said, you need this. 'Oh, sure, go ahead.' If you want to build that—go ahead. And it was kind of funny We gave him his okay, but by god, we didn't think he was gonna build it. But by god, he did." 34

Many residents thought the new Treasure Mountain Inn "was an eyesore, disrespectful of the town's architecture. Others thought it was exciting. "It was fun and interesting to have a new building," Wilma Larremore says. "We liked new buildings." Carol Santy particularly remembers the excitement of having an elevator in town. "Half of the town "went over and rode the elevator." 35

Not everyone was quick to welcome all of the changes. David Chaplin remembers being a newcomer and stopping at Pop Jenks' cafe (at the site of the present Mt. Aire Cafe) on his way to teach high school in the valley. Three or four local woman ran the cafe. "The ladies at the restaurant "were cautious about new people. They looked you over very carefully." Although they became friendly over time, these women were "always suspicious of the motivations of people buying and speculating on poor miners' properties and planning to sell them for vast amounts of money. Maybe they resented the resorts a little. It was not the good honest work you do in the mines."

Chaplin bought a house from a University of Utah professor "whose father was a carpenter living in Delta. The two talked a lot about the house, and when Chaplin decided to put in a covered stairway to his door, it seemed only natural to hire the father to come and help him build it. He later recalled:

On the second day of work, I went into the local bar, and the miners who were there knew I had hired a non-local. It was not the thing to do if I wanted to get along in this community....The miners began to talk to the bartender loudly about how difficult it was to get a job as a carpenter, when people from the outside were coming in to sell their services. Realizing my mistake, I expressed my regret to them, and they expressed their disgust They felt the town was being taken over by outsiders, and they were being left out of the benefits. 36

Also troublesome to residents "was the fact that the newcomers had different attitudes and lifestyles. Chaplin was refused service in a local bar because he wore a beard. Some of the newcomers got labeled as hippies. "We wondered where they came from. Anyone with the least bit of long hair was a 'dirty old hippie,'" says Jim Santy. "That's -what my mom used to call them." Ted Larremore felt that "they wanted to turn the town into a commune. They didn't want to work, just wanted to sit around naked." Tensions between the hard-rock miners and the long-haired young people grew volatile. At the 1971 Independence Day parade, one of the "hippies" watching the parade threw a water balloon that hit the wife of a local, igniting a riot of sorts. The brawl between the woman's husband and the balloon-thrower quickly grew into a melee. According to one memory, the policeman who drove up to quench the fighting "went ballistic" when water balloons sailed into his patrol car. Miners who had been in the bars stepped into the street, and "pretty soon there was a fight and a half" as the miners joined forces to throw the hippies out of town. Later in the day, when Chaplin walked down to Main Street for a drink, a sympathetic local pulled him aside and told him, "It would probably be better if you went home." 37

Interestingly, Parkites were proud of their ethnic and religious diversity, but they were also fiercely loyal to the kind of community they had created, and certain types of people threatened that. "If people didn't treat people decent, the miners "would take them to Main Street and say, 'Start walking and don't turn around,'" says Ted Larremore. He adds that although before the resort came he never heard profanity in the bars, people use profanity routinely now. "I'm no prude, but by golly it embarrasses me." His wife Wilma adds, "It "was a close town. The people were tough, but they had high morals." 38

After forty years, most of the few pre-1961 residents still in Park City recognize that the resort brought both positive and negative changes. For many, one of the happiest consequences was the extension of natural gas lines into town in 1964. And of course everyone appreciated the economic boost that skiing provided. Miners did have to make a drastic change of careers, from working underground to being part of the service industry, but at least they had jobs. Higher taxes, which forced some families out of town, were particularly hard on the older people.

And the investment potential of the recreation business forced the original ski area, Snow Park, out of business. In 1969 Otto Carpenter decided to expand. He surveyed for two new lifts, which a friend had promised to finance. Then, since his lease with the mining company was due to expire, he went to Red Droubay and explained his plans. Droubay told him to go ahead and put in the lifts but that the mining company would not sign another lease agreement. Otto replied, '"How dumb do you think I am? Do you think I'm going to spend all of that money and then have you say we'll buy you out at five to ten cents on the dollar? To hell with you.' I tore every god damned thing out; that was the end of it." 39 The upscale Deer Valley resort now sprawls across the slopes where locals used to ski for $1.50 a day.

Over the years, the social and physical landscape of the town has changed dramatically. One resident spoke of the divisions that arose after the resort was built and how the unity of the town declined. 40 The Larremores speak disparagingly of the huge houses on the tops of the hills: "I call them the Houses of Usher, staring down at us. They're spooky," says Ted. But he and his wife are content spending their summers in the miner's house they bought in 1948 and their winters in Arizona. Just below their house, the Park City Mountain Resort, as the ski area is now called, is building a ski run that will bridge Main Street, fulfilling the prediction that tracks of "happy skiers" would lead "right into the valley streets." The Larremores do not mind, because the run -will be a park in the summertime. For them, if not for everyone, the resort fulfilled the expectations it promised when a beleaguered mine company announced its vision of the future in 1961.

NOTES

Kristen Smart Roger s is associate editor of Utah Historical Quarterly. The author would like to thank the people who shared their stories for this article, and the staff and volunteers of the Park City Historical Society for their willing assistance

1 Summit County Bee & Park Record, November 28, 1963; hereafter Park Record. In the early 1960s the dismal economy in Park City induced the publisher to combine the Park Record with the Bee as on e paper

2 Edward Fraughton, telephone interview by author, June 5, 2001, notes in possession of author; Wilma and Ted Larremore, interview by author, May 30, 2001, notes in possession of author

3 Larremore and Fraughton interviews

4 George A.Thompson and Fraser Buck, Treasure Mountain Home: A Centennial History of Park City, Utah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 239

5 Park Record, April 13, 1961

6 Thelma Uriarte, interview by Anjie Buckner, September 13, 1999, transcript at Park City Museum

7 Larremore interview

8 Mel Fletcher, interview by author May 24, 2001, notes in possession of author Fletcher became ski patrol director for Treasure Mountains Resort In the early days, he put bindings on "all the kids' skis" and pushed skiing enthusiastically. "I was always trying to get these old skis out of the attic and get them on some kids' feet that wanted to ski This was a labor of love because I wanted to get everybody into skiing"; see Mel Fletcher, interview by Joseph Arave, October 18, 1989, and January 11 and February 27, 1990, 23, transcript at Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

9 Park Record, December 26, 1963 Some 170 of the area's children had participated in the ski school by this date

10 Fletcher, interview by Arave, 25.

11 Otto Carpenter, interview by Joseph Arave, August 7, 1989, 25, Special Collections, Marriott Library

12 Fletcher, interview by author

13 Park Record", April 13,1961.

14 The loan got a boost when Park Record publisher H C McGonaughy attended a luncheon meeting with President John Kennedy and mentioned the ski resort plan "Look into it, Mr Salinger," the president said to press secretary Pierre Salinger; see Park Record, May 9, 1963

15 Park Record, April 13, June 22, November 30, 1961, and March 1, September 6, 1962; Park Bulletin, March 22, 1963 The resort held a local contest to name the runs, judging the entries on "sparkle and image." Mor e than 980 entries were submitted, the bulk of them by high school students Winners received ski lessons and lift passes See Park Record, February 21, April 18, June 6, 1963

16 Larremore interview; Fletcher, interview by author; Park Record, April 19, 1962; Jim Santy, interview by author, May 30,2001, notes in possession of author

17 Santy interview The gondola lift, at 2.5 miles in length, was the longest in North America for a time Its purpose was to move skiers to the high terrain where the skiing was better The gondola could not move large numbers of skiers as fast as the resort's owners desired, especially after the advent of high-speed quads; it

18 Thelma Uriarte interview

19 Park Record, November 22, 1962; Thelma Uriarte interview, 33; Santy interview; Park Record, November 28, 1963

20 David Chaplin, interview by author, May 24, 2001, notes in author's possession

21 Park Record, May 2 and 9, 1963. Nelson's development forecast was indeed accurate.The Park Bulletin issues mentioned in this article are in the possession of Mel Fletcher; copies in author's possession

22 Park Record, May 9 and 16, 1963;"Ground Breaking Fact Sheet," May 11, 1963, copy in possession of Mike Korologos The groundbreaking celebration was such a memorable event that when the Larremores moved temporarily to Omaha and their fourth-grade son was asked to name the major holidays of the year, he named Bonanza Day; see Larremore interview. Not all of the planned amenities were built, probably because the ski resort did not live up to UPCM's profit projections.

23 Press release, Circuit and Eddington, Inc., December 6, 1963, copy in possession of Mike Korologos; Santy interview; Park Record, December 26,1963. A full-day, all-lifts pass cost $4.50.

24 Larremore interview.

24 Larremore interview.

25 Park Record, June 21, 1962; Larremore interview.

26 Park Record, January 17, 1963; Fraughton interview Loertscher had been a county commissioner and was in office when the state staged a raid on Park City's gambling and prostitution businesses in 1954 That event put him in a "tough" position, he told Fraughton But he was still well-liked He had served as an LDS bishop for years, and his son was a "great scout leader"—which scored big points in town since scouting -was the only organized activity besides band available to Park City kids

27 Park Bulletin, February 15, 1963

28 Ibid.; Fraughton interview.

29 Park Bulletin, February 15, 1963.

29 Park Bulletin, February 15, 1963.

30 Fraughton interview.

31 Larremore and Santy interviews.

32 "Park City First Annual Art Exhibit, September 2-8, 1963," program, PAM 6965, Utah State Historical Society archives

33 Fraughton interview

34 Leon Uriarte, interview by Anjie Buckner, October 28, 1999, transcript at Park City Museum

35 Larremore and Santy interviews

36 Chaplin interview

37 Chaplin, Larremore, and Santy interviews For an account of the event, see Jay Meehan, "Riot on Independence Day," Park City Lodestar, Summer 1996,17—21.

38 Larremore interview.

39 Carpenter interview.

40 Marie Horan, interviewed by Anjie Buckner, December 2, 1999, transcript at Park City Museum.