Over several months in 2026, The Storm examined hundreds of newspaper articles, ski area master development plans, U.S. Forest Service reports, and other archives documenting the evolution of lift-served skiing across the American West – and, in particular, Colorado – since the end of World War II. This fossil record of a mostly pre-internet culture captures the facts and sentiments of skiing’s past unfiltered by nostalgia or selective memory. This is the third in a series of articles summarizing those findings.
In 1967, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), in conjunction with four national ski associations, published a 25-page pamphlet entitled Skiing The National Forests – America’s Playgrounds. The document assertively casts the agency as the leading steward of America’s then-budding ski industry (boldface mine):
Today the National Forests offer some of the best skiing in the country. Over 200 ski areas, including more than 80 percent of the major ski areas in the West, are located entirely or partially on National Forest land. Well-designed and carefully managed to meet Forest Service safety requirements, these winter playgrounds have been built by businessmen, civic groups, and State agencies, and are operated under forest- use permits.
Two hundred ski areas is a surprising number for two reasons: 1) today, just 125 ski areas operate under USFS leases; and, 2) that 1967 list predated the opening of several major ski centers, including Sierra-at-Tahoe (1968), Mount Hood Meadows (1968), Grand Targhee (1969), Keystone (1970), Snowbird (1971), Kirkwood (1972), 49 Degrees North (1972), Copper (1972), Telluride (1972), Discovery (1972), and Beaver Creek (1980). Here’s the pamphlet’s 1967 inventory of USFS ski areas (which by my count lists 174, rather than “over 200” ski areas):