34 replies to this topic

[Limelight]

These are some pictures I took a few years ago with my wife. The lift still stands today as seen in the pics. It was built in 1936 by the Union Pacific Railroad. Its said to be the world first operation ski lift. Most of the chairs have been removed or stolen, but some still remain in the hard to reach spots. A few years ago the Sun Valley Company looked into doing some work in order to get it running again, but found it would be at to much of a risk of falling apart if the lift were to start moving again. Its now protected by law and the base is surround by multi million dollar homes, but you still have free access to the lift. Enjoy........

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Lower station bullwheel and counter weight.
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Lower station loading area
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Remain of the mid way unloading ramp
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Drive motor at the top station
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Chair with Mt Baldy in the background
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Top return bullwheel
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Top station again
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This post has been edited by Limelight: 15 April 2006 - 07:26 AM

[SkiBachelor]

I looked for this lift when I was there and never found it. Could you post a map of where it is exactly so the next time I go back I can look at this marvelous machine?

[WBSKI]

That lift is in pretty good shape, that would be cool if they restored it and ran it as a tourist attraction.

[Peter]

heres a map

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[SkiBachelor]

Actually, this is the old lift that serviced the ski jump. I asked Sun Valley about this lift and they said that it was removed because it wasn't used enough. It only was open for a few years too. So my guess is that this is not the first chairlift, but rather one of the first 5 that were built at Sun Valley. The first one was at Dollar Mountain from the pictures/content that I've seen. However, I could be wrong about this too.

[Peter]

This chailift is on Proctor Mountain, and was probably not the very first lift. The historical sign along the road says it is, but I think the first one was on Dollar mountain. There were a bunch built within a short period of time, so it isn't quite clear which one was actually first.

[poloxskier]

Anyone know if one of those 5 was the lift that ended up at Mt. Eyak in Alaska, also anyone know which one it was? The lift was suposedly from Sun Valley and is an American Steel and Wire but I dont know how many singles that Sun Valley once had.

This post has been edited by poloxskier: 09 April 2006 - 03:32 PM

[skiersage]

The original Single chair that was installed on dollar mountain was relocated to boyne mountain for $2000. It was the first lift relocation. It was located where the current hemlock chair is now.
Based on the way the terminals look, the terminals on the current hemlock are the original ones.


Based on this, I think it would be cool to bring the old lift back The only thing is that they would need all new towers and sheave trains.

[Peter]

There were at least 3 on Baldy, 2 on proctor and a couple on Dollar.

[Limelight]

Hey guys this is the worlds first chair lift. Your right, it was on Dollar Mt, but it was moved to Proctor Mt later on. At least this is what the Sun Valley company has claimed.

This post has been edited by Limelight: 09 April 2006 - 09:41 PM

[djspookman]

nice find limelight! thanks for the pics!

dave

[ski9600]

Wow, cool pictures. It is interesting how little has changed in ski lift design in the last 70 years.

[skier2]

didn't the original also have metal lattice towers? from the pictures I've seen, it did.

[Limelight]

I did some extra research. They built two lifts in 1936(the first two lifts ever), and this is is one of them. As said before, this lift was originally built on dollar Mt, but was moved to Proctor Mt a few years later.

The metal lattice towers didn't come until a few years later when they started to upgrade the ski lift design. So eventually they upgraded the dollar Mt lifts to the metal towers, and the first lift on Baldy Mt was built using metal towers.

This post has been edited by Limelight: 10 April 2006 - 05:30 PM

[Peter]

there were 3 of these lattice tower chairs built on Baldy in 1939 by American Steel and Wire. They were Lower (River Run), Exhibition, and Christmas. They were the first chairs on Baldy.

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This post has been edited by Skier: 10 April 2006 - 05:20 PM

[skiersage]

Quote

In 1948 Pappy Rogers, the general manager of Sun Valley, Idaho, sold the world's first chairlift to a young man from Detroit. Pappy wanted $5,000 for the already obsolete, wood-tower chairlift. Everett Kircher talked him down to $4,800 and then set to work.

He and Victor Gotschalk took the lift apart bolt by bolt, loaded it onto a truck and then put it on a train bound for Michigan. There, Everett and Victor put the chairlift back up on a hill that Everett had bought from a farmer for $1 because the hill was too steep to grow potatoes on.

At the time, Boyne Mountain was only 402 feet high, but since then the mountain has magically grown to more than 500 feet. That's because there is a sign painter in nearby Petoskey who earns a season pass every year by repainting the altitude sign. Every couple of years he adds a few feet to the height of the mountain.

Everett was a man who always thought outside the box. As a result, that old single chairlift spawned an empire that now owns and operates Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands in Michigan; Big Sky, Mont.; Brighton, Utah; Crystal Mountain, Wash.; Cypress Bowl, B.C., Gatlinburg, Tenn.; plus golf courses stretching from Florida to Michigan.

In the process of building this empire, Everett engineered and built the world's first triple and quad chairlifts and installed the first six-passenger chairlift. I always told Everett, "The reason you invent those things is so that more people can be hanging up in the air at the same time from a slow-moving cable and fewer people will be wearing out your expensive, manmade snow."

That lift is not the original one.

[SkiBachelor]

Here's an old Sun Valley trail map.

This map also shows the Cold Springs lift, most likely another American Steel & Wire single chair.

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[Limelight]

SkiBachelor, on Apr 10 2006, 06:29 PM, said:

Here's an old Sun Valley trail map.

This map also shows the Crystal Springs lift, most likely another American Steel & Wire single chair.

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Nice find. Wow how things have changed. Closing day is next week. They've had a record snow year, still have over a 100 inches on the ground, but they are still going to close on April 23rd.

skiersage, on Apr 10 2006, 06:26 PM, said:

That lift is not the original one.

Like I said, they built two in 1936, that was one of them.

The Sun Valley Company had claimed that this is the first ski lift for years. They've installed a nice historical sign that says it is, and if you are ever in Sun Valley and watch channel 13 (the Sun Valley show), they sometimes run a little history show that to will claim this. So not sure what the deal is.

This post has been edited by Limelight: 10 April 2006 - 05:53 PM

[Peter]

Where on that map is Crystal Springs?

[SkiBachelor]

Oops, I ment Cold Springs. Same location as the current lift. You can kind of see the lift line for it.