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Slippery slope
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March 31, 2000 | The Native American Utes called the land around Beaver Creek "The Shining Mountains" and had been living here for over 10,000 years when the first white men showed up in the 1840s. They were mountain men and hunters and they were just wandering through. During the 1860s, gold prospectors started poking around in Colorado. They had come over from California after the 1849 gold rush petered out. One of the first things that a prospector learns is that gold drains down from the mountains -- the great mother lode is always going to be up there somewhere. So they kept following the creeks into the mountains. The prospectors who came into Beaver Creek didn't find the mother lode, but they did find enough gold to make a living and they settled down and built small towns. Normally, miners lived on their claim site, but these guys spent their days up in the mountains and their nights in town.
Once the prospectors settled in, the ranchers came along. They homesteaded in the valley, raised cattle and farmed potatoes, peas and spinach. A mutually beneficial relationship developed between the ranchers and the prospectors. Each night the prospectors would come back into town with the few nuggets they had found in the mountains. They would head for a restaurant owned by the ranchers and buy themselves a steak dinner with side orders of potatoes, peas and spinach. The miners had the money and the ranchers had the rations. It was love and who would have thought it. After a while, the prospectors learned to love ranching. A few years of mining would go by and the prospector would have little to show for it, so he'd homestead a piece of land and settle down. During the 1950s, the area was consolidated into one big ranch by the Nottingham family. Even with the advantages of size, it was a shaky undertaking. So when a group of businessmen offered to buy the Nottinghams out, they accepted. And a marginal ranch became one of the world's finest ski resorts. For thousands of years, skiing was an essential form of transportation for people who lived in snow country. Some of the early miners who came to Colorado came from Scandinavia and they understood how to get around in the snow. Soon they showed everyone else how to make and use skis. They'd check out the side of a barn, and find a board with a smooth grain running lengthwise. Then they'd rip it off, and set one end into a pot of boiling water to soften the wood. Next they'd wedge the tip into a space between the cabin logs, bottom side up, and weigh the other end down until the wood dried. The result was an 8- to 12-foot ski with ends that turned up. Grease was rubbed on the bottom and leather belts were used as bindings. When heading up a hill, rough cloth was tied on the ski for traction. Primarily a mode of transportation, skiing was also a form of recreation. As early as 1880, skiers in Colorado got together and formed clubs to test their skills at downhill racing and ski jumping -- often at speeds of 80 miles an hour. Where there was snow, there were ski clubs. In the Western states, skiers looked at abandoned mining equipment and saw that much of it could be used in the construction of early ski lifts. By the 1930s, a number of winter resorts had been built.
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