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The 1970s

Kings Hill, and then Showdown

Every photograph in the archive from the 1970s, oldest first. The name changed inside this decade: Kings Hill until 1973, and Showdown from the day George Willett and Ted Cogswell Jr. bought it. Dated frames here run 1970–1979, and 43 more carry the decade but not a year.

The mountain got its first chairlift on Friday 27 November 1970 — the only lift in this archive dated to the day. A Stadeli double, 6,700 feet long, 1,400 feet of rise, with a mid-station from its opening day. Walter Stadeli came from Zurich in person to see it built; Donald "Pinky" Mathews wired it. It is still running today, as the Prospector. George Willett's verdict, forty-one years later: "running like a Swiss watch ever since."

George Willett arrived on 21 April 1973 — a young accountant who pulled into the driveway to find four feet of snow between him and the lodge — and stayed for forty-seven years. The new name was carried up the mountain fast: the archive holds a forty-six-photograph promotional shoot, cowboys and a mule on the headwall, made that same autumn.

The decade closed with the T-bar's replacement. Its line was cut in the summer of 1977 and the Payload triple chair was built in 1978, its towers flown into place by helicopter. It is the best-documented build on this mountain — around a hundred photographs, in order — and it too is still turning.

442 photographs10 years represented10 collections