Ski Colorado-Aspen and Snowmass-Now and Then

Ski Colorado article series

Today, Aspen and the adjacent Snowmass ski resorts are legendary, both for their incomparable snow and for the apres-ski that the quaint town of Aspen has to offer. Home to such legendary celebrities as Jack Nicholson, Don Henley, Goldie Hawn, and Mariah Carey, as well as the late John Denver, Aspen’s beginnings were far more humble. Aspen Colorado lodging was not always a ski-in / ski-out condo.

Founded in Ute Indian Territory in 1879, just a few years after Colorado became a state, the town was originally called Ute City. A rich silver mine formed along the Roaring Fork River was the original reason for its existence. It would be renamed Aspen in 1880, a year after its founding, in honor of the many Aspen trees that cover its breathtaking mountains. Though Aspen is now home to 5700 people, back in 1893, and the mine’s prosperity had that number up to some 12,000 residents. Just a little over a decade after the mining claim was made, it had banks, a hospital, two theatres, and an opera house. In that short time, Aspen even boasted electric lights! But nothing lasts forever. In the same year, the silver buying came to a sudden halt when the government repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. By 1930, there were only 705 residents remaining in the beautiful town.

But all was not lost. In that same 1930, investors would decide to revitalize Aspen as a ski resort. Though World War Two would cause a temporary setback, it would seem Aspen’s position as a legendary ski Colorado resort was predestined.

In the 1940’s, Friedl Pfeifer, who had trained for mountain combat in the Aspen area, teamed up with Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, who were established industrialists of the time. In 1946, they formed the Aspen Skiing Corporation, and Aspen began its rapid rise to notoriety. By 1950, Aspen hosted the FIS World Championships. Adding the additional ski areas of Buttermilk and the Aspen Highlands in 1958, as well as Snowmass only ten years later, it seems this lowly silver town’s aspiration was unstoppable as the top ski Colorado destination.

In the growth that ensued, Aspen would come to be home of the Aspen Music Festival, which was the first of what would become many music festivals across the country. It would eventually become home to Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies as well. Other institutes and ecological concerns were soon to follow. Those drawn to Aspen’s beauty and earthy lifestyle would come to base their corporations in the town they came to call home.

In the 1970’s, one could find people with a PhD working as janitors, simply because they had become enamoured of the beauty and the brilliant, eclectic personalities which live in this extraordinary town. Musicians, painters, and artists of all kind gathered there, and still flock to the town by the scores, though it has now become far too expensive for most to live in unless they’re at least moderately successful.

John Denver had no small part in making it a household name, having penned, recorded and released “Aspenglow” and constantly talking of his love for his Rocky Mountain paradise found there in another of his songs, “Starwood in Aspen,” (named after the gated subdivision where he lived. Throughout his career until his untimely death in 1997, John Denver championed environmental concerns, while drawing attention on Aspen and all of Colorado.

From Ute City to Aspen, from silver mine to an internationally renowned ski resort for the jet-setters, rich and famous, Aspen remains a quaint town and place of unsurpassed year-round beauty. The tapestry of namesake trees that carpet the mountains in the fall is breathtaking, and the winter skiing rivals that found anywhere in the world.

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