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Skiing Sandpoint

Schweitzer Mountain ski area under construction.   Photo by Ross Hall, courtesy of Dall Hall.

    As skiing became popular nationally, a group of people in Sandpoint developed a run on the Pine Street hill just west of town.  A gasoline engine operated a rope tow during the 1950s, carrying two adults or three kids at a time.  Since the hill was low in elevation, however, it sometimes lacked an important ingredient of skiing -- snow.

    While the fun of skiing was certainly on their minds, the men who planned the development of Schweitzer Mountain ski area had a more pragmatic goal -- the creation of winter jobs in an area that was economically depressed during the 1960s.

• Jim Parsons, Jr. talks about early skiing in Sandpoint