Year of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

History

Department or School/College

Department of History

Committee Chair

Jeff Wiltse

Commitee Members

Richard Drake, Bill Borrie

Keywords

Skiing, National Parks, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Rainier, American West

Publisher

University of Montana

Subject Categories

Human Geography | United States History

Abstract

In 1886, the U.S. Army mounted cavalry soldiers on skis to patrol the winter landscape of Yellowstone National Park. Prior to Yellowstone's skiing soldiers, the U.S. government had no formal relationship with skiing. In Yellowstone, the Army initiated the U.S. government's intimate and enduring relationship with skiing in the American West. When the National Park Service (NPS) took over the management of Yellowstone, the government's involvement with western skiing transferred over to the NPS. Upon its creation in 1916, the NPS inherited a national park system primarily carved from the high western mountains and embraced the promotion of recreational skiing in the deep and lingering snow of the parks. Working with regional boosters and park concessionaires, the NPS endeavored to transform snowbound parks into four season destinations. By the 1930s, national parks hosted high stakes ski competitions and became some of the earliest centers of lift-served skiing in the West. Ultimately, ski lifts operated in ten western parks during the 20th century. However, critics questioned the appropriateness of the national parks as venues for Alpine skiing. Struggling with its dual mandate of preservation and recreation, the NPS began to recalibrate its permissive approach to Alpine skiing by limiting the type of development and competitions allowed in the parks. The NPS exited World War II with a more conservative approach towards Alpine skiing. However, in the 1950s, the agency embraced a park by park approach to winter use that stifled the development of lift-served skiing in some parks while enabling its growth in others. This approach led to decades of contestation between the NPS, local populations, environmentalists, and concessionaires, which ultimately led to the removal of ski lifts in all of the parks except Yosemite and Olympic. In 2015, the United States Forest Service is the government agency most often equated with western skiing. In my thesis, I will suggest that it was the national parks that first created the inextricable link between the U.S. government and skiing in the West, and once this connection took hold, it proved to be an extremely difficult bond to break.

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© Copyright 2015 Jeffrey T. Meyer