COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Colorado boasts nearly three-dozen active ski areas, but so much of the sport’s history resides in unassuming slopes scattered throughout the state.
This is true of a pair of chutes at the base of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, in the shadow of the iconic Broadmoor Hotel. For 32 years from 1959 to 1991, they were home to the four runs of Ski Broadmoor, a neighborhood ski hill built and operated for most of its tenure by the hotel.
Ski Broadmoor’s trajectory tells the story of both the dreams and the difficulties for ski areas in Colorado through the years: A popular attraction that enjoyed growth as skiing exploded in popularity, but was later met with challenges from both cost and climate before eventually closing.
To help tell that story, we spoke with Michael Childers, an associate professor of history at Colorado State University, and Sarah Beatty, who learned to ski at Ski Broadmoor in her youth and is now the director of communications for Colorado Ski Country USA, the trade association that oversees 21 ski areas in the state.
‘One of those things that everybody did’
A brochure for Ski Broadmoor from the 1960s, provided by the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum, shows a full-day pass for $3.75 – about $38 in today’s dollars – and $5 ski school.
By Beatty’s account, Ski Broadmoor was a backyard ski area that made you earn your stripes. She spoke of moms in station wagons and slopeside pocket PB&Js, but also of European ski instructors who “didn’t mess around” when they taught you how to ski.
She described the “hats” program, in which ski students started at a white level and had to master certain skills to advance to the next color hat. She said she skied Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
It was a “community resource,” she recalled.
“There were cadets from the Air Force Academy that would come and ski weekends. There were soldiers from Fort Carson that would come and ski,” Beatty said. “It made it really one of those things that just everybody did.”
A pioneer in the ski industry
Ski Broadmoor was designed by Steve Knowlton, renowned as an architect of the sport who would become the first director of Colorado Ski Country USA.
It gained national notoriety in 1961 when it hosted a slalom tournament for some of the world’s top skiers.
The ski area sat at just over 7,000 feet at the summit and on the edge of Colorado Springs proper. To combat a lack of consistent snowfall, Ski Broadmoor deployed a $200,000 snowmaking machine known as the “Phenomenal Snowman” and heralded as the first of its kind west of the Mississippi.
Ski Broadmoor was also an early adopter of night skiing, lighting the runs from 7 to 10 p.m.
“And we have to remember that this is a great model,” Childers said. “The ski area was not just a local mountain, it also was an amenity for this really posh hotel. And so you're able to have these people go out and see a few runs at night before it got too terribly cold, and sneak in and get themselves to the bar or have dinner at the Broadmoor.”
The snow was also likely to be in better shape during the colder night than it was during the warm afternoons, Childers said.
The struggle for viability
In what would become a bit of foreshadowing, the opening of Ski Broadmoor was delayed by a month in 1959 due to a lack of snow.
“There's a little too low in elevation, a little too much sunshine and just a little drier on the front range that is on the west slope,” Childers said.
As the years wore on, Ski Broadmoor and its high-powered snowmaker “fought a changing climate that brought Chinook winds and drastic changes in temperature each season,” according to a Broadmoor Hotel account cited by the Pioneers Museum.
Compounding the economic issues were rising costs to insure its chair lift in the 1980s, Childers said. The Broadmoor Hotel considered closing the ski area, he said, but instead leased it to the City of Colorado Springs in 1986.
The city’s time at the helm, though, was embroiled in controversy. According to an Associated Press report published in the Aspen Daily Times in 1987, at least two city officials resigned over controversy stemming from hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized spending on the ski resort.
The city recommended closing the ski area in 1988, but eventually negotiated a deal with Vail Associates to take over operations.
According to an Aspen Daily Times report from that summer, Vail hoped to implement a sort of “farm system” model, in which Front Range ski areas like Ski Broadmoor and Eldora would serve as “feeder” ski hills to usher people to the company’s bigger mountains.
Even Vail couldn’t turn a profit at Ski Broadmoor, though, and ultimately decided it couldn’t justify continued investment in land it didn’t own. Vail cut ties with Ski Broadmoor in 1991, and the ski area shuttered.
“[The farm system model] was a really good idea at the time, and it kind of fed into some of the historical trends of skiing […] But it just simply didn't work out in terms of economic realities at that moment,” Childers said.
‘Emblematic of Colorado’s history’
Ski Broadmoor followed a series of Front Range, rope-tow ski areas that helped the sport grow in popularity during the mid-20th century.
While many of these ski areas met the same demise, Beatty said they made skiing more accessible.
“I think it is kind of emblematic of Colorado's history of how we see skiing as part of our heritage, as part of our history, as part of what we do here,” she said.
The success at times of places like Ski Broadmoor also put more eyes on Colorado for things like the winter Olympic Games and other popular snowsport events, according to Childers.
“Skiing had become an increasingly important cornerstone of the state culture and economy and who we were, and [Ski Broadmoor] really reflected that,” he said. “It was part of this kind of blossoming of skiing and winter recreation throughout the state.”
- This story first aired as part of a Denver7+ special presentation of Discover Colorado. Watch the full episode in the video player below: