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Show Park City Ski Areas Past? Present and Future ! - " v, ... V. . "... '- . :'.: . v . . . ' .... " ,Vl - - .. : ; , .s. ,. "N 1 - . . ' - f . - - -' l4 , . . v : . -. . ' - 5 V ;s v4; x v There presence here has brought great prestige to the Park City area. To select this area as their home base and training ground, is a real compliment to Park City. Not xnly to the great people in the area, who assist in financial support of the team, but to the superior skiing. Everytime there is a professional profession-al race, or competition, anywhere, members of the U.S. Ski Team attend. They carry the Park City name with them, everywhere they go. The tremendous success of this group draws attention to, and complements Park City, the Park City Ski Area and the state of Utah. The Park City Ski Area and the town of Park City strongly believe in the U.S. Ski Team and supports them one hundred percent. This year, Park City will host the Fourth Annual 'U.S. Ski Team and Celebrity Classic' Fund Raiser. The four days of festivities features celebrity races, entertainment entertain-ment and special events. With celebrities and locals donating their time and talent, the event generated huge crowds and lots of money, with all proceeds going to the support of the ski team. NASTAR, the National Standard Race Program is featured at the Park City Ski Area, with races for the novice skier almost every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday during the ski season. Subaru Super NASTAR Races are held throughout the season for experienced NASTAR racers. "many hundreds of people will come to Park City,'" and advertise the city as "a 'meccd1 for winter sports, that are so attractive in other mountain cities-but none as ideal for such sports as Park City.'" the Park Record-923 Packy Longfellow, Communications Director, Park City Ski Area. Today, the Park City Ski Resort has eight double chairlifts, three triple chairlifts, and western America's longest four-passenger gondola. The resort offers skiing terrain for all ability levels, with 70 designated trails as well as 650 acres of open-bowl skiing. With a total of 2,200 acres of developed ski area, the Park City Resort is now the largest ski resort in the state of Utah. Throughout the resort's twenty year history, the surrounding area has proliferated. Park City itself, little more than a ghost town at the resorts inception,-has become a thriving metropolis. Parkites, anxious to preserve the towns rich heritage have continually been called upon to take a stand, as one piece of history after another has stood threatened by the encroachment of developers, eager to cash in on the new Park City boom. Today, newcomers as well as natives recognize the unique character of old Park City and are working closely together, with city government, to preserve that which is left. This determination to hold the past, while meeting the needs of the present and future, is typical of the spirit that makes Park City and the Parkites thrive. One of the charms that attracts visitors to the Park City Ski Area is the close proximity to Park City's "old town." Listed on the National Historic Register, "Historic Main Street" is carefully monitored to preserve the old and make sure new construction is in keeping with the atmosphere of the old mining town. In addition to the old and the unique, and the greatest skiing on earth, Park City offers an abundance of hotels, lodges, condominiums, restaurants, gift shops, clubs, bars, retail stores, skiers, riding to the Summit House, the comfort of new gondola cabins. The new cabins, manufactured manu-factured in Europe, feature automatic opening and closing doors, to allow quick, easy loading and unloading. Additional smowmaking pipe and pumps have been installed on the mountain. This will make it possible for crews to manufacture snow simultaneously at snowguns located at the top, as well as at the base of the ski area. And of course, the established favorites, are there again for skiers. The Park City Teaching Method, Me-thod, which combines teaching approaches unique to the Park City School, with the best features of the American Teaching Method and the Graduated Length Method, Me-thod, is offered by Park City's professional Ski School. Led by Ski School Director, Duane Vigos, Park City's Ski School has a place for all age and ability levels. Kinderschule lessons are offered offer-ed for children age three to six. With emphasis on "how to have fun in the snow" and "how to ski", children who take Kinderschule Kinder-schule lessons are often riding the lift with their parents within two to three days after beginning to ski. Combined Kinderschule offers ski lessons and Kinderkare Day Care, leaving parents free to enjoy the mountain. Youth School is offered for pre-teens, age seven to twelve. And of course, private lessons are available, offering a variety of formats to meet every need. Park City is the home of the U.S. Ski Team. With the Park City Ski Area as their home base, these high calibar athletes train and prepare i in the Alpine and Nordic ski areas ! for the Winter Olympic games, which are held every four years. The Park Record reported the occasion as a "huge success!", and, went on to state, "as a winter sports center, Park City wins the banner, and Deer Valley, the ideal spot, will become world-famous." Meanwhile, a full year passed while the Park City Citizen's Progressive Association completed com-pleted their analysis of the proposed WPA project, j Given final acceptance, Parkites ; immediately began work on an amatuer ski jump, three ski-riding trails, a slalom course, a toboggan ! slide, sledding areas, and a warming shelter. Unfortunately, they were a year j to fate. Just one week prior to the Park J City decision to move ahead on the WPA proposal, Union Pacific Railroad announced the opening of Sun Valley, Idaho. The skiing emphasis on the Wasatch Front turned back to Alta and the proposed Park City skiers 'mecca' escaped becoming reality. Mel Fletcher, a third generation Parkite, was one of the first to realize the important role skiing would play in Park City's future. In 1946, he began organizing a club amoung the winter sports enthusiasts still in Park City. Two others who attempted to reintroduce skiing to Park City were Otto Carpenter and Robert Burns. They developed a ski area called Snow Park, in Deer Valley. Bob Wright, son of Emmett Wright, mentioned earlier in this article, was next to take up the ski cause in Park City, when he was introduced to skiing at the newly created Snow Park area. In 1953, he joined the Snow Park ski patrol and began thinking about developing develop-ing another ski area in the Park City community. In 1957, while attending the University of Utah College of Engineering, Wright wrote a thesis on the feasibility of developing a ski area in Park City. Selecting Park City's Iron Mountain Moun-tain as the perfect site for such development, he proposed a tramway to the summit and suggested the possible conversion of existing aerial ore tramways into a gondola system for carrying passengers. While Wright was working on his dissertation, stockholders in United Park City Mines Company, unhappy with their dwindling dividends, suggested converting some of the mine companies property to recreational use. Directors of the United Park City Mines Company, a company which owned vast amounts of acreage in the Park City Area, began seriously looking at recreational recrea-tional development as a viable alternate means of augmenting their miningjncome. Following an in-depth feasibility study, the Recreation and Land Development Division of Park City Mines Company and the Park City Recreation Committee, began in earnist, looking for federal low-interest low-interest loans, and other sources of funding. Ultimately, funding was found and work began. j The Iron Mountain area was renamed Treasure Mountain Resort, Re-sort, and on December 21, 1963, the Park City Ski Resort officially opened. Festivities included a 22 minute gondola ride to the Summit ! . House, a return trip to the resort center for a fashion show, a melodrama, and food & drinks. j -Nearly forty years after the Park Record had predicted Park City would become "a 'mecca' for winter sports.", the Records prophetic statement began to see fruitation. Within five years of it's grand opening, United Park City Mines began looking for someone to take over the ski facility. In 1970, Royal Street Company of New Orleans assumed operation of the Park City Resort. In 1975, the present owners, Alpine Meadows of Tahoe, Inc. bought the ski area. At that time, there were nine ski lifts serving the developed areas. j, ... ; 1 .sT 'IkVKt hTs?- ltS ' -. by Louise Page The 1982-83 ski season, marks the 20th year anniversary of the Park City Ski Area. Intrigued and somewhat surprised sur-prised by the revelation that twenty years had passed since the inception of the Park City Resort, my natural curiosity led me to ask the questions, whose idea was it anyway, and how did the project get off the ground? Park City, well-known to everyone every-one as the multi-million dollar, silver mining boom-town of the late 1800's, is rich in history. The focus always being on the boom or bust, good times,. bad times, high population, low population cycles, so characteristic of mining towns, and the inherent struggle through the century to survive. For that reason, I was somewhat surprised when I discovered that according to the history books, skiing as an activity, is not new, or unique in Park City. As early as 1868, 30 years before the horrendous fire that completely leveled the town in 1898, Scandinavians were skijng in Park City. Attracted there because of the need for skilled tradesmen and craftsmen, immi-grints immi-grints from Norway, Sweden and Finland introduced skiing to their new mountain home. Documented by numerous photos, Emmett 'Bud' Wright, a Park City native born in 1887, used home-made skis to trouble-shoot the phone lines connecting Park City with Alta and Brighton. Recreational skiing is recorded as early as 1916, when members of the Wasatch Mountain Club were exploring canyons above Park City looking for ski routes into Brighton Pass. In 1923, nine members of the Norwegion Young Men's Club, of Salt Lake City, came to Park City to stage a ski jumping exhibition. The Park Record predicted in their report of the exhibition, that 1 the annual event would bring in ' "many hundreds of people to Park City," and advertise the city as "a 'mecca' for winter sports, that are so attractive in other mountain cities-but none as ideal for such sports as Park City." A small take-off was constructed on Creole Hill, where quite a few informal jumping exhibitions were staged for several years. There were numerous local tournaments and dual meets between the rival high schools of Park City and Heber, but the "many hundreds" of winter sports enthusiasts predicted in the Park Record report failed to materialize. Unfortunately, they were all at Ecker Hill, (today called Pine Brook) where there was skiing at Rasmussens' Ranch in the morning morn-ing and professional jumpers to watch in the afternoon. During the recovery period, following the great depression, a representative from Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Work Progress Administration" Ad-ministration" (WPA) presented a proposal to the Park City Fathers to transform Park City into "the best winter sports center in America." A committee, the Park City Citizen's Progressive Association, was formed to consider the proposal. At the same time, the Salt Lake J.C.'s were putting together a plan to charter a train to transport Salt Lake skiers to various winter recreation sites in the Wasatch Mountains. The very first 'snow train' left the Denver and Rio Grande Western Depot in Salt Lake, early Sunday morning, February 16, 1936, destined for the hills above Park City. Loaded down with more than 500 Wasatch Front skiers, the steam locomotive labored for four hours up Parleys Canyon, across Parleys Park, ultimately depositing deposit-ing it's cargo at the mouth of Vfrog'brD&r and services. There are numerous tennis arid racketball clubs, swimming pouls, and several golf courses. While Park City has grown leaps and bounds, the resort has developed at a significant pace. Several new features mark the opening of the 1982-83 ski season. Among these, Parkcity Village Associates, announce the completion comple-tion of the Park City Village Phase One. The only one of it's kind in the Park City area, the project will offer a new year-round ice skating rink, fifty new condo-hotel units, a rental shop, an equipment repair shop, and several new restaurants, restaur-ants, specialty shops, and a ski shop. Park City has just completed the first phase of a new under-ground parking facility, opening 350 underground parking spaces for this ski season. Park City Ski Area's existing four-passenger gondola .will offr , :x,:::v;.v.-:...: i . .. . , . . . - ; ........ . . . . '. 1 ' 4" 1 - |