DENVER, Colorado — Before the days of the six-person chair lift and covered gondola, Colorado skiers had to find their own way up the mountain.
Some opted to hitch a ride with miners heading to the top while others hiked.
Public Historian for History Colorado, Sam Bock, explained "not a lot of people could do that even in the 1940s. So, the ski lift is really what made skiing a Colorado past time for middle-class Denverites."
In 1946, ski lifts were already up and running in Colorado and other parts of the country. However, this week in Colorado History, Aspen opened the longest and fastest lift in the world to a lucky few skiers.
Bock said the lift gained "about 2,200 vertical feet in elevation." It was a far cry from what Colorado skiers and snowboarders are used to today.
"These were one or two-seat chairlifts. They were really. really slow and pretty scary actually, a little rickety," Bock said.
The lift was separated into two trips. After a 15-minute ride, the first lift dropped passengers off at a warming hut at midmountain. Then, skiers were greeted with a blanket as they hopped on a second lift which would take them to the sundeck on top of the mountain.
Even the world's longest and fastest chair lift wasn't perfect. "The wheels that carried the chair were actually directly above the riders. So, it dripped grease down onto people riding the lift. Aspen ended up dry cleaning a lot of people’s clothes for years after the lift opened," Bock told 9NEWS.
In 1947, when the lift officially opened to the public, one ride "would cost you $2.75. A day pass was a little over $3 and a season pass was a little over $140. In today’s money, that ski lift pass translates to about $1,600. So, skiing has never been cheap in Colorado," Bock said.
Still, Bock described the ski lift as "one of the most economically important inventions in Colorado history."
"It really made Colorado’s culture," he said.
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