W. Averell Harriman was born in 1891, the son of E.H. Harriman who was President of the Union Pacific Railroad. By the time he was 40, Averell had established an investment bank, Harriman Brothers & Company, and was Chairman of the Board of Union Pacific.

In 1930 Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch whose family was in banking came to the U.S. to study American banking. Schaffgotsch went to work at Harriman’s investment bank in New York City. The amiable, outgoing Count and Harriman developed a friendship. Harriman was intrigued by Schaffgotsch’s tales of skiing in the Alps, particularly of the special ski trains! As a result, Harriman commissioned a special Union Pacific study to see if that model could work in the U.S.

Felix Schaffgotsch and Averell Harriman stand in front of Sun Valley Lodge in 1936. Photo courtesy The Community Llibrary, Regional History Department.

By 1935 Harriman had decided to build a destination ski resort in the American west, but where? He wanted it to be accessible by passenger rail, but not too close to a population center where “weekend skiers” could crowd the area. He reached out to Schaffgotsch to find the best location.  

In November of 1935, Schaffgotsch set off on a six week tour of the American west. In the process he would visit sites that now are established ski resorts. These included Little and Big Cottonwood canyons in Utah, Jackson Hole in Wyoming, the Lake Tahoe region, and Colorado. However issues like accessibility, altitude, snow amounts made them less desirable. Plus they came up short on Harriman’s primary criterion: proximity to the Union Pacific rail lines! Finally Schaffgotsch was talked into visiting a small mining town in Idaho located at the end of a spur track of the Union Pacific Railroad, Ketchum, Idaho.

Schaffgotsch climbed and skied the nearby hills and mountains. He sent Harriman a glowing report on what he found. The surrounding area had “more delightful features for a winter sports center than any other place I have seen in the United States, Switzerland, or Austria!”

That was in January of 1936 and what happened next is difficult to imagine in today’s environment. Union Pacific acquired 43,000 acres just outside Ketchum. In December of 1936 Sun Valley Resort opened with world-class accommodations in the 220 room Sun Valley Lodge plus a ski area with two mountains. And the ski area had the first chairlifts ever! The Union Pacific engineering department was challenged to come up with a better uphill conveyance than the pervasive rope tows. They developed the chairlift based on a banana loading system for ships! There was one chairlift on Dollar Mountain and one on Proctor Mountain. Schaffgotsch recruited Austrian ski instructors to staff the ski school and returned to manage the resort after it opened.

So in less than a year a destination ski resort went from concept to operation! Have you tried to get a contractor lately?

Another brilliant move Harriman made was to hire Steve Harragan to promote and market the new resort. Harragan was a publicist well connected with the rich and famous. He hated cold weather and thought skiers were crazy! So he wanted to emphasize warmth and heat, hence the name Sun Valley. His tag line was “Winter sports under a summer sun!” And I’ve got to say from my couple of visits there, it lived up to that statement!

Harragan also knew that celebrities would draw people so some of the first visitors were Hollywood and entertainment personalities: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, to name a few. And many spent significant time there! Ernest Hemingway set up residence in Sun Valley and wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls” there.

In 1939 lifts were added to the “big” mountain. Bald Mountain affectionately known as Baldy provides 3000 feet of vertical with a top elevation of 9150 feet. By the way, Bald Mountain got its name because all the nearby mountains are treeless and it’s the only one with trees!

And of course in 1941 Sun Valley was the setting for the feature film “Sun Valley Serenade” which starred Olympic skating champion Sonja Henie!

This season Sun Valley is celebrating its 90th year as a destination ski resort! It’s an area that has contributed much to American skiing history and stands as a tribute to its founder W. Averell Harriman.