Origins of Skiing in America

Walker Royall of Dallas is a financial and real estate executive with over 25 years of professional experience. Walker Royall heads Briarwood Capital, a real estate development firm in Dallas. He balances his professional interests with diverse athletic and recreational activities, including boating, fishing, hiking, and skiing.

Ski artifacts and cave drawings suggest that skiing has been around since the last Ice Age in the Palaeolithic period. The stunt was invented to facilitate movement during hunting. However, the invention of the chairlift in 1936 revolutionized skiing as a recreational activity in the US.

Before skiing became a sport in the US, the Norwegians, Swedes, and Lapps had used skis for many centuries. Skiing was first noticed in the US when a Norwegian man known as "Snowshoe" Thompson who used skis throughout 20 successive winters to carry mail from Northern California to Idaho. From then, ski clubs became established in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where there were Swedish and Norwegian settlers.

The governing body for the sport, the National Ski Association was formed in 1904 and renamed the United States Ski Association in 1961. It is called the United States Ski and Snowboard Association. The first ski resorts to open in America were Alta in Utah and Sun Valley in Idaho during the 1930s.