03/10/2021 | By Snowsports Journalist Daniel Gibson | A fun, new, short film I ran across online, the Solomon-produced 12-minute documentary titled “The Chairlift,” got me thinking about these mechanical devices that are so essential to downhill skiing as we know it. While self-powered backcountry skiing is growing by leaps and bounds, almost every skier or snowboarder first stoked their snow passions by riding chairlifts and skiing within developed areas. It is probably the single greatest invention related to skiing, and did more to popularize the sport than any other development. James Curran created the first at Sun Valley, Idaho, for the 1936–37 season with financing by Averell Harriman, the former governor of New York. Curran, who never skied, was an engineer with Union Pacific Railroad, which then owned the fledgling ski area. The single-seaters were modified from banana conveyor systems built to load cargo ships in the tropics. The basic design remains in effect today. Mt. Tremblant in Canada installed that nation’s first chair in 1939, and Europe saw its first erected in Czechoslovakia in 1940. Aspen received its first chair in 1947, and Squaw Valley, California put up a double chair in 1949. The post-war American boom saw hundreds erected nationwide, and skiing as we know it began to emerge.