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Sun Valley, Idaho • Vol. 19: #32 • (8-6-2023) Tidbits of Coachella Valley
• During the early 1930s, the Union Pacific Railroad needed to drum up business. To get new passengers onboard, they built spur lines to scenic wonders, constructed hotels to accommodate tourists, then advertised these splendid destinations nationwide.
• The 1932 Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York, spurred a new national interest in winter sports. Averell Harriman, Union Pacific Railroad chairman, was himself an avid skier and decided the railroad needed to establish a first-class ski resort as an exciting attraction to gain new and adventurous passengers.
• Harriman hired noted Austrian sportsman Count Felix von Schaffgotsch to scout the western U.S. for the perfect site to build a ski resort. In his searches, Schaffgotsch found that areas in Washington and California were too crowded. Oregon was too rainy, resulting in slush. Lake Tahoe got too many blizzards. Both Nevada and Utah didn’t get enough snow, and Colorado was either too cold, too windy, or was too heavily wooded. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was perfect, but the state highway department refused to keep the road through the only 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 once been a thriving gold mining town, but the population dropped to less than 100 when the gold ran out. Schaffgotsch was delighted with the area: two large mountains, little wind, lots of sun, and plenty of snow.
• On a ski tour of the valley, Schaffgotsch skied up to a woman sitting on a split rail corral fence on a ranch. He introduced himself 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 4,300-acre ranch that encompassed the entire 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 seats for riders, creating the world’s first chairlift. Tickets cost 25 cents, equal to about $5.50 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 it generated would be well worth it. Finally, he became a ski instructor at Sun Valley.
• But 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 into joining in the war 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 flatly 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 had recruited were arrested for their Nazi affiliation.
• In 1942, Schaffgotsch, now a German First Lieutenant, was killed in the war at age 38. Sun Valley closed for four years until the war ended. A nearby mountain had been named for Schaffgotsch, but Harriman ordered that the name be permanently strickened from the records.
• 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 of snow annually and operates the world’s largest automated snowmaking system. Over two million people visit each winter. Sun Valley’s name is appropriate because the area receives an average of 250 sunny days yearly. Lift tickets today cost a bit more than a quarter; they're now running between $100 and $200 daily. □
