Mary Jane Mountain: The Legend in the Lift Maze
Near Winter Park, Colorado
The southern side of Winter Park Resort carries the name Mary Jane, and behind that name is one of the odder origin stories in Colorado mountain history. The most widely repeated account holds that a woman known as Mary Jane operated a business in the rough and transient community called Arrow, a small settlement that once existed a few miles up the old railroad bed from the present resort. Exactly what kind of business she ran is left to historical inference, though local accounts and newspaper references have been fairly consistent over the decades.
The parcel of land at what is now the Mary Jane ski area base was known as the Mary Jane Placer, a mining claim designation. That land bore her name either because she owned it outright or because it was transferred to her as payment in kind. The historical record on the precise mechanism is genuinely unclear.
What is certain is that the land took her name and kept it. Denver secured additional land to develop Mary Jane as a ski area. It opened in nineteen seventy-five, adding a large amount of new terrain.
The terrain on Mary Jane, steeper and more demanding than the original Winter Park side, developed a reputation for serious skiers that it still holds today. Every trail map distributed at the resort carries the name of a woman whose full history no one seems certain of.
