The Chairlift Was Invented for Bananas

Before the winter of nineteen thirty-six, skiers who wanted to go downhill first had to walk or skin uphill. Rope tows existed at a few eastern resorts but were awkward and hard on the hands. What no resort yet had was a reliable way to lift paying customers up a mountain efficiently, comfortably, and in large numbers.

The Sun Valley project solved this problem, and it did so with an idea borrowed from an entirely different industry. Union Pacific engineer Jim Curran had previously worked for a steel firm that built equipment for loading bananas onto ships. The conveyor systems he worked with moved objects along a suspended line, attached to hooks, rising from dock level into cargo holds.

Watching the problem of how to transport skiers uphill, Curran recognized that the principle was identical. He adapted his banana-loader design, replacing cargo hooks with seats, and had the world's first chairlifts operating on Dollar Mountain and Proctor Mountain in time for the resort's opening in December of nineteen thirty-six. The design worked so well that within a few years, resorts across North America were copying it.

The concept of the chairlift, today so standard that it is inseparable from the idea of a ski resort, came from a man thinking about how to load fruit into a ship's hold. One of the original nineteen thirty-six chairlifts was later shipped to Cordova, Alaska, where it continued to operate. As of recent accounts, it remains the oldest operating chairlift in the world, still running on the same fundamental design Jim Curran drew up for Harriman's mountain.