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Averell Harriman’s fascination with skiing took root during his travels in Europe as an international banker in the late 1920s and early 1930s, where he witnessed firsthand the boundless popularity of destination ski resorts. He observed that his banker colleagues routinely spent their winter holidays at resorts in Austria and Switzerland, immersing themselves in the alpine culture that was rapidly becoming a hallmark of European leisure.
Upon returning to the United States, and after ascending to the role of Chairman of the Board of the Union Pacific Railroad, Harriman began to contemplate how such a model might be transplanted to America. With characteristic ambition, he envisioned a resort that would not only enhance Union Pacific’s standing among its competitors but also establish a new frontier for skiing culture in the West.
Herriman Union Pacific Railroad
With the Santa Fe Railroad to the south promoting winter travel through the sun, and the Canadian Pacific to the north showcasing the beauty of Banff and Lake Louise, the Union Pacific Railroad found itself sandwiched between competitors yet lacking a marquee attraction of its own.
Recalling the immense popularity of Europe’s destination ski resorts, Averell Harriman began to wonder if such notoriety might be possible in the American West. His own experience working with a Union Pacific surveying crew in 1909, in the regions of Island Park and Victor, Idaho, had given him firsthand knowledge of the West’s spectacular mountains.
Convinced of the promise this idea held, Harriman embarked on a crusade to discover an American ski resort that could rival, or even surpass, the great resorts of Europe, Canada, and the Southern United States.
Harriman skiing in Sun Valley's back country
Harriman
Harriman and Count Felix Schaffgotsch with Sun Valley's Bald Mountain on the horizon
Sun Valley Lodge Winter 1937
Count Felix Schaffgotsch on a mountain behind the Twin Creeks Subdivision discovering Sun Valley / March 1936
Lacking the personal expertise to locate such a site himself, Averell Harriman wisely enlisted the help of a European friend. He turned to Count Felix Schaffgotsch, an Austrian aristocrat and member of a prominent banking family, whose estate Harriman had once rented while hunting chamois—the small goat‑like antelope of the Alps. Schaffgotsch became Harriman’s choice to scour the western United States in search of an “American St. Moritz.”
Though Harriman admitted that Schaffgotsch was not the finest skier in the world, he credited the Count with playing a significant role in the development of Austrian ski resorts. Alf Engen, who would later serve nearly forty years as director of Alta’s ski school, guided Schaffgotsch through the Wasatch Mountains during the winter of 1935–36. Engen remembered him as personable and intelligent, though possessed of a touch of aristocratic arrogance.
Armed with the vast network of the Union Pacific Railroad, Count Felix Schaffgotsch set out to find the perfect site for an American destination ski resort. Yet his meticulous search yielded no success at first. Colorado’s mountains, though majestic, were too high in elevation and lacked precipitous terrain. In the Sierras of California, the weather proved too severe. The Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake City were dismissed for their proximity to urban crowds, and Mount Rainier in Washington lacked the light, dry powder so cherished in the Austrian Alps.
Guided through the Wasatch by Alf Engen, later celebrated as the father of alpine skiing in Utah, Schaffgotsch pressed on. But his findings were so discouraging that many began to doubt whether the mountains of the American West could yield such a place at all.
Then, as if fate had revealed its hidden hand, the Count was taken to a sparse mining and sheep town in remote central Idaho. There, at last, he found perfection, a paradise that in his words “contained more delightful features than any other place he had seen in the U.S., Switzerland, or Austria for a winter sports center.”
The Count March of 1936 in what will soon be Sun Valley
Ketchum’s alpine touring terrain proved ideal for downhill skiing in 1936. Its rolling, treeless lower hills recalled the slopes of St. Anton (Austria), while its wooded middle elevations mirrored the forested regions around Kitzbühel (Austria). At its highest points, the rugged alpine contours evoked St. Moritz (Switzerland). This topography—so reminiscent of Europe’s renowned snow‑covered Alps- offered just the right combination to inspire Count Felix Schaffgotsch and Averell Harriman to select what would soon become Sun Valley.
On Washington’s Birthday, 1936, Harriman arrived in Ketchum aboard his private railroad coach. Guided by Schaffgotsch, he toured the surrounding terrain and fell in love immediately with the site that would become America’s first destination ski resort. With the location chosen, the challenge shifted to development and promotion. True to Harriman’s genius—just as he had employed Schaffgotsch to find a European skiing paradise in America, nothing was left to chance. The best talent the world had to offer was consulted and hired to bring Sun Valley to life.
Sun Valley's treeless lower slopes of Dollar Mountain. Sep Froehlich and Otto Lang the skiers
Sun Valley skier and lodge winter 1937
Sun Valley Village by moonlight / winter 2017
Sun Valley's Alps / Treeless alpine expanses of the Pioneer Mountains
Dollar Mountain Chair 1937
Treeless Alpine expanses of St. Anton Austria
n the promotional department, Harriman enlisted the flamboyant publicity genius Steve Hannagan, best known for transforming Miami Beach into a household name. Hannagan advised Harriman that “simply building a hotel in the middle of the Idaho wilderness would not make the news. Build a million‑dollar lodge there, and headlines will shortly follow.” Harriman embraced the idea, and after receiving approval from the Union Pacific board of directors, ground was broken in late May 1936 on Sun Valley’s million‑dollar lodge.
For the development department, Harriman sought the counsel of experts to ensure the skiing matched the grandeur of the lodge. He turned to Count Felix Schaffgotsch, John Morgan (an early ski authority), Charlie Proctor (Dartmouth ski coach and member of the 1928 U.S. Olympic team), and Alf Engen (America’s premier ski jumper of the mid‑1930s). Together, they selected the slopes of Penny, Dollar, Proctor, and Ruud mountains as the sites where Sun Valley’s skiing would take place.
Steve Hannagan
John Morgan
Charles Proctor
Alf Engen
In 1936, ski transportation in the United States was still a rarity. Aside from the occasional rope‑tow or J‑bar found in the East, most skiers ascended hillsides either on foot or by climbing on skis. True to his vision of creating a luxury resort in the Idaho wilderness that would rival or surpass anything in Europe, Averell Harriman recognized that ski lifts would be essential to the theme.
That March, Harriman hired Charlie Proctor to instruct the local Ketchum community in the art of guiding skiers and to advise on the placement of lifts. Several methods of uphill transportation were considered, but it was a concept devised by a young Union Pacific engineer, Jim Curran, that captured both Proctor’s and Harriman’s attention.
By the summer of 1936, chairlifts were swiftly installed on Proctor Mountain and Dollar Mountain, with an additional lift added the following summer on the ski‑jumping hill of Ruud Mountain. At the time, few could have imagined the profound and permanent consequences the chairlift would have, not only on alpine skiing itself but also on the very nature of ski instruction.
Jim Curran sitting on the World's first Chair Lift near the summit of Proctor Mountain 1936
Dollar Mountain Chair 1937
Proctor Mountain Chair 1937
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