Aspen Snowmass
Aspen Snowmass: the back story
The back story
About Aspen Snowmass: the back story
Aspen was a silver-mining town that had fallen quiet when skiing arrived. Aspen Skiing Company opened its first lift on Aspen Mountain eighty winters ago, and over the decades added Buttermilk, Snowmass and Aspen Highlands, so that one ticket now covers four very different mountains.
A silver town
Hotel Jerome opened in 1889 at the height of Aspen’s silver boom, and it is still, in its own words, the social hub of the town. It is also the only Aspen hotel to have come through the silver crash, the long winters before skiing and the Depression, which tells you how quiet the valley became once the mines fell silent.
The Aspen Idea
The idea that skiing could bring Aspen out of its quiet years had been growing since 1936, when the Roaring Fork Winter Sports Club was born. Its greatest champion was Friedl Pfeifer, an Austrian immigrant and 10th Mountain Division veteran, who worked with Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke of Chicago to found the Aspen Skiing Corporation. Its opening coincided with Lift-1 on Aspen Mountain, then the longest chairlift in the world, and with a vision of a town where mind, body and spirit could all thrive.
One lift ticket, four mountains.
Racing on the world stage
Aspen Mountain hosted the first FIS Alpine World Championships held outside Europe, where Italy’s Zeno Colò won the downhill and giant slalom. Racing has stayed at the heart of the place ever since: the mountain hosted the World Cup Finals in March 2017, the fiftieth anniversary of the World Cup circuit.
Four mountains
Pfeifer opened Buttermilk in 1958 as a learning area, and the company bought it five years later. Snowmass followed in a ski boom, as Snowmass-at-Aspen, with five chairlifts and one restaurant; today it has 22 lifts and more than 3,300 acres, larger than the other three mountains combined. Aspen Highlands, opened in 1958 by Whipple Jones, joined in the 1990s, and its Highland Bowl, 270 acres of hike-to terrain topping out at 12,392 feet, became fully part of the ski area in the 2002–03 winter.
The gondola and beyond
The Silver Queen Gondola arrived in 1986, then the longest single-stage gondola in the world, cutting the ride from town to the 11,212-foot summit to fourteen minutes. X Games Aspen has made Buttermilk its home since 2001, and in December 2023 the Hero’s terrain added 153 acres to Aspen Mountain, its largest improvement since the gondola. This winter marks eighty years of Aspen Snowmass.
Why it's on our list
- Hotel Jerome, 1889: the silver-boom landmark
- Lift-1, once the world’s longest chairlift
- Buttermilk and Aspen Highlands, both opened in 1958
- The Silver Queen Gondola, from town to summit
- Highland Bowl, in bounds since 2002–03
Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Aspen Snowmass: the back story before you go.