Stay up to date with Snow King's latest news!
The 35-year old Rafferty lift is replaced with a Doppelmayr fixed grip quad. The Cowboy Coaster opens to the public, the Treetop Adventure and two new base lodges are built.
Snow King Mountain Recreations is formed to separate mountain operations from the real estate holdings. Max C. Chapman, Jr takes over as president.
Snow King Resort sells The Snow King Hotel and Grand View Lodge properties to JMI Realty. Snow King Mountain becomes its own business entity with mountain operations and real estate holdings
Pre-Winter Olympic Training at Snow King, U.S and French women’s ski teams
Pre-Winter Olympic Training at Snow King (8 international ski teams, many medaled).
King’s Tubes (tubing hill) opens.
Jackson Hole Ski Club hosts regional race teams pre-season invitationals
The Cougar triple chairlift opens; 1,200 riders per hour.
Snow King Center (ski center and ice rink) opens and the old ski shelter demolished.
The Jackson Hole community celebrates the 50th anniversary of Snow King.
A new Summit Lift is constructed.
Snow King Resort is formed combining the Snow King Inn and Snow King ski area with Manuel Lopez as general manager.
Rafferty lift constructed on east slope of Snow King; land leased to Western Slide Corporation to build and operate a summer slide.
The Ramada Snow King Inn (now the Snow King Resort Hotel), built by Western Standard, opens in its current location.
Neil Rafferty retires
Western Standard Corporation of Riverton, Wyoming, purchases the Snow King ski area operation along with 60 acres at the base of the mountain, and secures a lease from the town of Jackson on 27 contiguous acres on the mountain, and a 20-year Forest Service lease on the Snow King ski and recreational area (approximately 375 acres)
The new Summit Double chairlift opens.
The Winter Sports Association begins working to upgrade the single chairlift to a double chair. The old cable is replaced with an 8,800-pound track cable and a new break-over tower is constructed for unloading the double chairs.
Single chairlift carries 8,500 people to the top of Snow King during the 1948 – 1949 season.
Wyoming’s first Single chairlift opens (January 7).
The Jackson Hole Winter Sports Association is formed. The association raises $40,000 from local investors, buys an old tramway from a gold mining operation near Salida, Colorado, and hires a Denver contractor to construct a lift from it. In its first full year of operation more than 8,500 people ride the lift to the top of the mountain.
Old Man’s Flats rope tow, first cable tow on Snow King, opens; Neil Rafferty becomes part-time lift operator.
The cable, used to power the uphill tow, was bought used from an oil drilling company in Casper, Wyoming. The work crew ran the cable through a narrow cut in the forest up the west side of the ski area, all powered by an old Ford tractor.
Ski area name changed to “Snow King.”
Mountaineer and skier Fred Brown helps begin the Jackson Hole Ski Association and becomes the first president of the Jackson Hole Ski Club.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructs a horse and hiking trail to the top of Snow King for the Forest Service, making the first of many physical changes to the hill to facilitate recreational use. The CCC trail became the first “official” ski run on the mountain.
Town hill named the “Ruth Hanna Simms Ski Hill” in honor of local resident who donated money to build a ski jump.
Mike O’Neil builds a ski jump on Jackson’s “Town Hill”.
Skiers began hiking up the mountain – sometimes called Kelly’s Hill or simply “the town hill”- and enjoying the steep downhill run.