Last week’s trivia question asked what U.S. ski area installed the highest capacity ski lift in 1954. The answer was the original Big Spruce double chair!!

That may seem hard to believe for those of us who are more familiar with that lift towards the end of its life when it was affectionately called the “Big Pig!” However in 1954 double chairlifts were relatively new and that Roebling chairlift was state of the art!

That original lift was over 6000 feet in length and went closer to the top of Spruce Peak than the current Sensation lift does, but that makes it less exposed to wind. The chairlift opened on December 18, 1954 so next week will mark 70 years of lift served skiing on Big Spruce.

The development  on the Spruce side dates back to 1946. Sepp Ruschp  and C. V. Starr wanted to build a T-Bar on the Mount Mansfield side. You may remember that Starr didn’t like having to wait in lift lines on the old single chair so was willing to invest in a new lift. The targeted location would be on 400 acres of land owned by Craig Burt so negotiations began to purchase the land. Burt also owned 3000 acres on the Spruce side and both Starr and Ruschp could see the benefits of acquiring that land as well. To put it in Sepp’s own words:

“Mr. Starr and I offered the Burts $55,000. They countered with $100,000. In 1947 we eventually bought the Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak land for $75,000. The Burt Company reserved the timber rights for their lumber company.”

The first skiing development on the Spruce side would be on Little Spruce for the1949-50 season where slopes were cleared and rope tows installed. The rope tows were replaced with a T-Bar for the following season.

The land on Spruce was entirely owned by the Mountain Company unlike the Mansfield side where the state owned the land above a certain elevation. This allowed Sepp Ruschp to apply his own vision for Spruce. He wanted a wide open slope similar to what he had growing up in Austria. With the addition of the Big Spruce double, the Main Street slope was built with width ranging from 100 to 1000 feet! According to Charlie Lord “It has been carefully graded and smoothed so that a light snow cover will provide a relatively smooth skiing surface.”

Today it’s difficult to really envision how open that slope was. You have to look at old photos to appreciate the original concept. Even when I started skiing Stowe in 1969, Mother Nature had started to encroach on the open space.

In addition to Main Street, the Sterling trail was cut which Charlie Lord proclaimed as “just about the best trail in the Mt. Mansfield area for the average skier.” In my opinion, it still is! Not only is it a trip back in time, but it provides that bridge for beginners up to intermediate. Let’s face it, some of our intermediate trails on Mt. Mansfield are a big step up for a beginner!

Another aspect of the Spruce development was as a summer attraction. Summer tourists could ride up the double, hike over to Sterling Pond or take advantage of the outlook platform that had a spectacular view of Mount Mansfield.

The Little Spruce chairlift would not be added until the 1963-64 season. At which time the Spruce base facility was enhanced including the Stuberl bar.

In some respects the current development on Spruce is what Ruschp and Starr thought they wanted. But I can’t help but wonder whether they’d recognize it today. Granted, everything about skiing is so different now.