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…
