Big Mountain: The Ski Resort the Town Built Itself
Near Whitefish, Montana
The story of how Whitefish got its ski resort begins before the resort existed, in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, when a loose community of winter enthusiasts calling themselves the Hell-Roaring Ski Club would strap on wooden skis and hike up to the summit of the mountain above town. They skinned through waist-deep snow, built crude huts near the top, and skied back down in conditions that would turn away most modern visitors. After the Second World War, two entrepreneurs from Great Falls named Ed Schenck and George Prentice began searching for the right site to build a commercial ski resort in northwestern Montana.
They came to Whitefish in nineteen forty six and found a community that was eager to participate. Rather than seeking outside investment, Schenck and Prentice incorporated a public company called Winter Sports Inc. and offered shares to local residents at one hundred and two hundred dollars each.
The chamber of commerce raised forty thousand dollars. The founders put in twenty thousand more. By March of nineteen forty seven, seventy thousand dollars in community stock had been sold.
On December fourteen, nineteen forty seven, Big Mountain opened for its first ski season. About a thousand people showed up from around the Flathead Valley. A lift ticket to ride the new T-bar cost two dollars.
The resort lost thirty six hundred dollars in its first winter and the community bought more stock to cover it. Big Mountain hosted the United States Alpine Championships in early March of nineteen forty nine, where a sixteen year old from Vermont named Andrea Mead won all three women's events. Today it operates as Whitefish Mountain Resort, with more than three thousand acres of skiable terrain.
The mountain the Hell-Roaring Ski Club hiked up now has more than a dozen lifts.
