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Show :::flH " ' . - ' - ,f . .fe - - Snow Park Editor' Note: Each weefc throughout the centennial year a historic site in Park City will be identified with a descriptive plaque. By the end othe year the numbered markers will act as signposts to a self-guided tour of Park City. This week's centennial site is Snow Park. In 1946 Bob Bums and Otto Carpenter opened Park City's first ski resort on this site. They were avid skiers who traveled throughout Utah to enjoy the sport, and decided that Park City was well suited for a ski area. Several years earlier a government grant to cut ski trails had been provided to Park City, and work was begun in this area. The project was never completed due to depletion of funds. Burns and Carpenter leased this land from United Park City mines, and cleared and widened the overgrown trails. Pine trees cut from the slopes were used for lift towers and to build an 800-square-foot, coal heated lodge. Burns, a machinist, a Carpenter, a building contractor, designed and build the ski lift. Burns designed the cheve wheels which operated the tow cables, and machined them at a local foundry. This first lift was about 1500 feet long, and carried skiers by chair. Snow Park also featured a ski jump and a 900-foot-long T-bar beginners lift, and provided ski uistructors and a ski patrol. The resort only operated on weekends, when it attracted up to 400 skiers a day. On weekday evenings Snow Park offered tubing parties, at which partygoers took the lighted lift to the top, then slid down in inner tubes. Chili and warm drinks were served in the lodge. For many years these parties were solidly booked by church, social and school groups. Otto Carpenter became sole proprietor of Snow Park in 1953 when he bought Bob Burns' share of the business. When he was unable to obtain a lease extension in 1969, the; resort was closed and the lifts and lodge were demolished. The Deer Valley ski area, which now occupies the area once used by Snow Park, has commemorated Bums' and Carpenter's pioneering efforts in the local ski industry by naming ski lifts after them, and by calling its base facility the Snow Park Lodge. Snow Park, now known as Deer Valley, as seen in the late 1940s near the current Carpenter lift. photo courtesy of Otto Carpenter |