Authors

John W. Lundin

Files

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Document Type

Article

Description

The Seattle Park Board opened its Municipal Ski Park at Snoqualmie Summit in January 1934, on U.S. Forest Service land, and operated it as a park facility through the ski season of 1940. This was likely the only municipally owned and operated ski area in the country at the time. The Ski Park was made possible by the availability of federal funds under programs adopted by the Roosevelt Administration to put people back to work in the Great Depression, and reflects how skiing had grown in popularity in the Northwest by the early 1930s.

Publication Date

Summer 6-18-2018

City

Seattle

Keywords

ski, mountaineers, patrol races, Snoqualmie Pass, Stampede Pass

Disciplines

United States History

Comments

John is a lawyer who has done extensive research and writing about his family’s history, and is a former member of the Sahalie Ski Club on Snoqualmie Pass. His mother, Margaret Odell, was part of Seattle’s early ski scene in the late 1930s,and as advisor to the Queen Anne Ski Club from 1938 - 1940, she took her students by train every weekend to the Milwaukee Ski Bowl for ski lessons. John is a long time skier who learned to ski on Snoqualmie Pass, and has homes in Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho. He was a founder of the Washington State Ski & Snowboard Museum and is on its Board. John’s book, Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass, received a Skade award from the International Ski History Association as outstanding regional ski history book for 2017. A short version of this paper was published on HistoryLink.org, the on-line encyclopedia of Washington History.

Spatial Coverage (for ex: Ellensburg, WA)

Seattle, Snoqualmie Pass

SEATTLE’S MUNICIPAL SKI PARK AT SNOQUALMIE SUMMIT 1934-1940

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