Beef Trail

The Beef Trail sat on a ridge between the Butte and Dillon valleys, about five miles southwest of Butte, on a small pass once crossed by cattle drives between Dillon and Butte, which gave it its name. The Butte Ski Club, a nonprofit formed in 1937 by skiers with ties to the Anaconda Company, bought a 960-acre parcel there that year. Volunteers moved rock, cut trails and built roads and buildings, and in 1939 they opened the hill with a 900-foot rope tow driven by a Model A Ford engine. A 2009 magazine account, drawing on a documentary by Terry Lonner, calls it Montana's first major ski area and gives it about 1,500 feet of vertical.^1,2

Over the years the club added rope tows, a T-bar, lights for night skiing, a groomer and snowmaking, and Beef Trail leaders won skiing a place as a Montana high school varsity sport. A run of snowless winters in the late 1980s, along with competition from Discovery, Maverick Mountain and Bridger Bowl, ended it after about 50 years, and the area was sold in 1990. The club lives on as a charitable foundation that takes Butte schoolchildren skiing at Discovery.^1,2