Celebrating 75 Years of Boyne Mountain

Everett Kircher had fallen in love with skiing. He bought his first pair of skis the same year Sun Valley opened. He took them to Lake Placid to try them out.

Sun Valley had a profound effect on Everett and his newly developing passion for downhill skiing.

Otsego Ski Club near Gaylord, Michigan, had a 250-foot vertical slope. It was the best ski facility Michigan could offer at the time, and it was the place Everett Kircher spent his weekends skiing.  It was the first ski club in the United States with its own lodging and facilities. But it wasn't much of a ski hill, and the experience was still very rudimentary. The rhetorical question for most of the skiers there was "Wouldn't it be great if Michigan had a real ski mountain?"

Later in the winter, Everett got together with two ski buddies, John Norton and Jim Christianson. They all wanted more challenging runs and they decided to get serious about finding a mountain-like slope in Michigan.

They spent long weekends through the summer of 1947 exploring the various sites.  The sixth site they examined was the final choice.  After settling on the site, the three partners each anted up $5,000 to buy the property. When they told Senator William Pearson*, the 88-year-old owner of the land, what they wanted to do with his property, he said,

"Anybody damn-fool enough to want to build a ski hill, well... I'll give you the property."

Averill Harriman, founder of Sun Valley Resort, wanted a better way to haul skiers up his mountain. One of his Union Pacific Railroad engineers, James Curren, a self-made bridge engineer who had learned his profession by observing and doing, came up with an idea. His inspiration was equipment used for loading bananas onto boats using hooks strung on a continuously moving cable. The hooks, he thought, could each hold a single-person chair. His superiors thought the idea was too dangerous, but Curren managed to slip his plan through to company headquarters and the "brass" in Chicago loved it and put a priority on its development.

Sun Valley's first two single-chair lifts were the first ever built in the world. They were installed in time for the 1937 winter opening season at Sun Valley. The single-chair lift that originally went up Sun Valley's Dollar Mountain is the one that Boyne later purchased for the opening of the Boyne Ski Club.

Finally, the runs were cleared, the first chairlift in the Midwest was erected, and the lodge was built, all in time to open for the holidays in 1948.

An opening ceremony was held on January 9, 1949. All the major Midwest newspapers sent reporters from Chicago, Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Detroit. Politicians, local celebrities, and others were there, including Don McClouth, the owner of Otsego Ski Club, for whom the run McClouth was named. A group of pro skiers staged a race, and everyone gathered at the base of the hill to attend the opening ceremonies.

WJR Radio in Detroit aired the opening ceremony remarks from Kircher and Pearson* live on January 10, 1949.

With the decision to make the ownership of Boyne Mountain his full-time career, Everett started planning the first-ever expansion of the four-year-old ski club. 

In 1953, the original lodge was expanded by a 50' x 70' addition, including a new dining room, 24 guest rooms, and the oh-so-swanky Snowflake Room. As a nod to his beloved Sun Valley Resort, he added a heated outdoor pool. Boyne's outdoor pool was the first of its kind at any Midwest resort.

Skiers rendezvousing at the Snowflake Room started using the slang "Snowflaking" when they planned to meet there. For instance, "We'll be snowflaking at 4:30, see you then!"     

Bill Flemming, eventually a long-time broadcaster on ABC, was working at WWJ-TV Channel 4 in Detroit in the mid-1950s. At the time, skiing was sweeping the nation, but there was very little coverage and no reports on ski conditions in Northern Michigan. So Flemming started doing a little report on Thursday nights.

When Warren Miller, the famous ski filmmaker, came to Detroit to do the celebrated narration of his ski film for the American Youth Hostel program, he asked Flemming to emcee. In return, Flemming asked Miller to be interviewed on his TV show. When all this was happening, Jim Christianson, one of the original partners in the Boyne Ski Club, was working as the general manager of a Detroit-area educational television station. Christianson got wind of the whole scenario and asked Flemming to come up north to meet Everett Kircher.

Kircher, Flemming, and Miller formed an alliance through the years. All three wanted to promote the joys of skiing because they themselves were in love with the sport. When Miller came up to see Boyne Mountain, he left his mark on the place, literally. In the Eagle's Nest, drawn all over the wall, are Miller's famous cartoons. Miller would later film skiing at Boyne for his movies, and Flemming helped promote the pro skiing tour Kircher came up with.

When Ed and Bill Jans purchased Sun Valley in 1965, Miller sent a letter to Kircher asking him to advise them, saying, "As you know, they recently purchased Sun Valley. They wanted to know who was the most knowledgeable in artificial snow and general resort moneymaking. Your name immediately cropped up." Bill Jans founded Snowmass during the same time period.

On this day in January 1949, a dedication ceremony was held for the first season at Boyne Mountain. The ceremony was broadcast live by Detroit-based WJR radio.

Our humble beginnings grew from a single lodge to a sprawling resort. Even so, our energy, grit, and passion remain the same. Today, we are proud to celebrate 75 years of growth and innovation.

From purchasing the first forty acres to becoming the longest-running ski company in the world - we would not be here without our guests and team members. Cheers to another 75 years.