From a single chair lift to the USA’s best ski resort

The Squaw Valley resort merged in 2012 with the neighbouring ski resort of Alpine Meadows to become Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows. Receiving around 450 inches (11 metres) of snow a year and covering an area of over 6,000 skiable acres (2,500 hectares), the combined resort has 270 trails and is served by an advanced network of 31 lifts, capable of transporting 72,200 people up the slopes every hour.

Situated 42 miles (68 km) from Reno and 196 miles (315 km) from San Francisco, it is now one of Sierra Nevada’s leading ski resorts and an internationally recognised winter sports destination. Its 600,000 visitors a year are attracted by its deep snow, Californian sunshine and long skiing seasons, which have earned it the name of “Spring Skiing Capital”, as well as its 50 bars, restaurants and boutiques. The resort was voted Best Ski Resort in North America for three years in a row between 2016 and 2018 by USA Today. With a view to cementing that status, a USD 17 million investment in the resort was announced ahead of the 2019/20 season.

The resort opened for skiing in 1949, when it had a solitary chair lift, two tow ropes and a 50-room lodge for visitors. Six years later it was bidding to host the VIII Olympic Winter Games, thanks to the vision and drive of its founder, Alexander Cushing, a wealthy New York lawyer. He saw the Games as an opportunity to establish a world-class ski resort and to boost tourism, commerce and infrastructure in the Lake Tahoe area. Live broadcasting of the Games helped make that vision a reality, as images of the resort and Lake Tahoe were broadcast into living rooms across the nation, increasing the resort’s visibility.

The resort underwent major development in preparation for the Games, including the construction of two modern hotels, a new terminal at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, a sewage network and water treatment plant, and the expansion of the power grid serving this new infrastructure. The Games also provided the impetus for the completion of Interstate 80, a major national highway running from coast to coast, between California and New Jersey. As the first all-weather highway to cross the Sierra Nevada, it was a significant feat of engineering.

An Olympic Village was also built to compensate for the relative lack of accommodation at the time. Comprising four three-storey buildings accommodating up to 1,200 people, the centrally located Olympic Village also featured a multi-purpose Athletes’ Centre. The Village now operates as a hotel, while the Athletes’ Centre remains an integral part of the village and is home to a bar and a bakery.

Though a hugely popular winter sports resort, it has not become a major sporting venue. In 2017, the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup made its first visit to the resort in 48 years, with women’s slalom and giant slalom races taking place on the same runs used for the Olympic slalom and giant slalom races in 1960.

Currently, there is a push to safeguard the legacy of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games with plans in place for the creation of a permanent VIII Olympic Winter Games museum in the resort, which will also showcase the history of skiing in the Sierra Nevada.

The resort’s existing Olympic Museum, at High Camp, is relatively small in size. It features news articles, video presentations and memorabilia from the 1960 Games, together with items donated by Olympians and Squaw Valley Ski Team members Julia Mancuso, Travis Ganong, Marco Sullivan and Nate Holland.

The resort, which has a population of over 3,600, has changed its name. Following outreach to Native American groups and the local and extended community, the resort’s leadership decided to drop the offensive term ‘squaw’ from its name.