By Sally Graves Jackson

CARVING A TRAIL : A HISTORY OF SKIING IN UTAH By Sally Graves Jackson Commissioned by the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Arts Festival Raymond T. Grant, Artistic Director The Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 hen Miss Florence Merriam visited Alta, Utah, in 1893, she asked Initially, transport was the attraction of skis; they were needed simply to get the assayer of the Grizzly Mine how he escaped around. But wherever winters stretched on, skills were sharpened and com- W loneliness during the long, snowy winter. “Pointing to the petitive skiing became a popular escape from cabin fever. It provided that precipitous mountain wall opposite,” she wrote later, “he aston- addictive mix of athleticism, speed and winner’s thrill that men so often seek ished us by saying he had ridden down it on his skees. It was dangerous and formalize in their communities. They found such a sport on the backs of but exciting work, he said simply. He had been up and down most of the horses, in the seats of race cars and kneeling in dug-out canoes, not to men- mountains around Alta.”1 tion in the power of their own legs. Likewise, ski races (and eager betting by onlookers) became regular entertainment in western mining camps. By No one knows exactly when skis first carved a trail in Utah’s snow, but most going straight down the slopes, says ski historian Alan Engen, the good ski- likely they appeared with miners who began probing the region’s mountains ers could whistle along at more than eighty miles per hour. This took a toll soon after California’s gold rush in 1849. Among those fortune seekers were a on ankles, legs and a few necks, but the risk was small compared to the good many Scandinavians—ship jumpers from the port of San Francisco— more established pastimes of drinking and fighting. Engen notes that the whose familiarity with skis was practically knitted into their genes. These men winner of the first organized ski tournament in 1868, a California miner undoubtedly shared what were first called “Norwegian snowshoes” with their named Robert Oliver, was “subsequently shot and killed by a fellow skier in a snowbound fellows. There were skis in California’s mining settlements in the saloon brawl.”2 1850s, a skiing mailman on the eastside of the Sierra Nevada in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and by 1870 there were skiers among the silver miners up Little Those early skis were made from single pieces of wood and had only leather Cottonwood and other Wasatch canyons. straps for bindings. They were eight, 12, even 14 feet long, carved carefully into wide planks with the familiar upturned point (an ancient design, evi- dent in Scandinavian petroglyphs from the Stone Age). Rougher versions were improvised from oaken barrel staves or floorboards sharpened at the ends. When you see these first skis, the word lumber comes to mind, both the noun and the verb, but at least one old-timer from Alta’s last mining years has described doing kick turns with “an effort like a high-kickin’ chorus girl’s” on 11 foot skis. For control he had only a “single long pole . cut from creek-side brush.”3 Few skiers today try the old long boards; they’re amaz- ingly solid and handsome, but, unlike the bamboo fly rod or the birch bark canoe, they don’t generate much nostalgia. In the late 1880s, America received another, larger wave of Norwegian immi- Special collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah Marriott Library, Willard J. Special collections, Early Main Street, Alta 1 2 grants, among whom were some fine ski jumpers. Wherever they found cheeked sons of Norway” sailed off the inrun and soared briefly but suitable terrain and snowy winters they organized local clubs, built jumps on triumphantly through the air. Many of them tumbled upon landing, includ- hills or scaffolds, and held contests. After the first ski-jumping tournament in ing Miss Bergstedt Paulsen, but even so they established the sport solidly in Minnesota in 1887, interest in the sport spread far and wide. Inevitably, the hearts of the onlookers. New and better jumps were built in subsequent Norwegians arrived in Salt Lake City and Utahns who lived outside of the years, and promotion by club members such as Axel Andresen, Martinius snowbound mining towns discovered skiing. “Mark” Strand, and Peter Ecker lured more competitors and crowds of thousands to the contests. “We used to ski right down Main Street from 2nd North [and then] to the Brigham Young monument,”4 recalled the late Borghild Bergstedt Paulsen, a By the end of the 1920s, Strand and Ecker had begun a tireless and fruitful Norwegian who came to Salt Lake City as a young lady in 1914. On her days off from work, she joined a group called the Norwegian Young Folks Society for skiing expeditions up and down the mountains near town. Other locals, particularly members of the newly formed Wasatch Mountain Club, adopted their novel recreation. On weekends and holidays, groups of skiers would make their way to Emigration Canyon or Ensign Peak, Brighton Inn or the largely abandoned mining settlements of Alta or Park City. Much of those areas, which had once been a patchwork of mining claims, was now con- trolled by the U.S. Forest Service as public land. Among the Norwegian Young Folks were several accomplished jumpers who Special collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah Marriott Library, Willard J. Special collections, were determined to continue their Alta jumpers in the early days were Alf Engen, left; Mac Maeser, next to Alf, and the late Dave Quinney, second from right. The rest are not identified. sport. In 1916, they organized Utah’s first jumping tournament just east of effort to bring national jumping competitions to Utah. Two notable new town in Dry Canyon, near where the jumps were built: Becker Hill in Ogden and Ecker Hill near Salt Lake City. University of Utah’s giant U now glows When the U.S. professional jumping team came from the Midwest to com- at night. A crowd of eager spectators, pete on Becker Hill in 1930, several of its members decided to settle in the whom The Salt Lake Tribune described area. Norway-born Alf and Sverre Engen, Halvor Bjørngaard and Einar Fredbo as “mouths agape and eyes wide open,” were jumpers of wide renown, and their presence in Utah helped secure its gathered to watch as the “ruddy- future in the world of competitive skiing. The Engens, in particular, became Special collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah Marriott Library, Willard J. Special collections, P.S. Ecker and Alf Engen with skis at the Alf Engen Ski Tournament 3 4 pivotal figures in intermountain skiing for the next 60 years. As a jumper, Alf set several world records; later, he would win U.S. championships in jumping, But even as the jumpers attracted their loyal crowds, more and more cross-country, downhill and slalom skiing. He would also coach the 1948 Americans were learning to have their own fun on skis. In 1929, the Olympic Ski Team, teach thousands of people to ski at the Alta Ski School first destination ski resort opened in New Hampshire. Like ski areas in and, elsewhere, appear in movies and receive dozens of awards from state Europe, Peckett’s Inn offered lodging, equipment and skiing lessons. and national skiing organizations. The inn’s Austrian instructors taught their favored “Arlberg method” of downhill skiing, in which the skier descends a slope in a series of graceful During the jumping heyday of the early 1930s, the newspapers devoted curves. This technique became better known after the 1932 Olympic Winter entire pages to the competitions. “Thrills galore!” the Tribune proclaimed of a Games in Lake Placid, and demand for ski areas and typical meet, “Witnessing human bodies zipping through the air at an almost lessons spread throughout the country. Thus, by the late 1930s, downhill ski- unbelievable speed of 60 miles an hour, supported only by wood ski run- ing in Utah had replaced ski jumping in popularity. “Skiing became such a ners, almost escapes the imagination!” Along with photographs of the skiers rage,” says Alan Engen, “that the Forest Service in Utah began much like those on baseball cards, the Tribune also provided rah-rah trivia. to search for sites to develop ski areas. They hired Alf Engen [Alan’s father] to Sverre Engen’s picture in 1931 was captioned, “A fine specimen of Norwegian explore the local mountains and evaluate them as candidates for develop- manhood. Watch him, girls!” ment.” There were many challenges in building the so-called ski industry in Utah. One was accessibility: skiers needed to get to their favorite ski areas. Rail lines laid during the mining years became especially useful, as did a prolifer- ation of roads, trails and shelters built by federal employees in programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC also planted trees in areas such as Alta, where miners had cut all the timber. Another challenge to the fledgling ski industry was recruitment of skiers. As more instructors gave more lessons, the number of local participants grew. But Utah’s ski promoters also wanted to attract skiers (and their dollars) from elsewhere. Mark Strand, who became vice president of the National Ski Association in 1936, continued to foster Utah’s role in hosting national tournaments. He also kept a close eye on skiing trends Special collections, J.

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