Lost ski areaColoradoElk MountainsRocky Mountains
Pioneer
Ran 1939–1952. A club ski area on Cement Mountain south of Crested Butte that opened in 1939 with Colorado's first chairlift and closed in the 1950s.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Pioneer Ski Area was on the north side of Cement Mountain, up Cement Creek south of Crested Butte, near today's Crested Butte South. The Gunnison ski club built it with local skiers and the Works Progress Administration, and it opened officially on December 3, 1939.1,2,3,4
Read the whole historyTodayThe lift's base terminal, part of its bullwheel and the guest cabins at the base still stood in 2006. (2006)2
Timeline
4 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Pioneer, or worked there?
Tell us what you remember, or what this page has wrong. Memories show here, credited to you, after we read them; facts are checked against a source before they change a figure.
Lost near Pioneer
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1967 · 13.7 mi away · ColoradoA summer ski area with one tow on a 13,000-foot snowfield on the north side of Castle Peak, outside Aspen, run on and off from 1967 into the 1970s.
- 1936–1938 · 19.6 mi away · ColoradoA club rope tow on a sagebrush slope about two miles west of downtown Gunnison, built with WPA help and used for two winters, 1936 to 1938.
- 1971–1974 · 25.3 mi away · ColoradoA one-chairlift ski area on Mount Daly above Marble, the first piece of a large resort and real estate plan that collapsed in 1974.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 4 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Pioneer Ski Area was on the north side of Cement Mountain, up Cement Creek south of Crested Butte, near today's Crested Butte South. The Gunnison ski club built it with local skiers and the Works Progress Administration, and it opened officially on December 3, 1939. Its lift, a single chair pieced together from old mining tram parts, was Colorado's first chairlift; Colorado Ski History gives it a length of 3,000 feet, and the Crested Butte News says it climbed nearly 2,000 feet. A small rope tow ran off a Model A Ford engine. Two trails, the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, came down from the top station, called Star Point, to a small lodge and cabins.1,2,3,4
Western State College held physical education classes there on weekdays, and its ski team taught. Colorado Ski History says the area closed after the 1952 season, when the lift was condemned; the Crested Butte News says skiing lasted until 1956, and a racer recalls an NCAA meet there that year. In 2010 a group of Crested Butte South residents floated reviving it as a neighborhood ski hill.1,2,3
TodayThe lift's base terminal, part of its bullwheel and the guest cabins at the base still stood in 2006. (2006)2
Timeline
Sources for this history (4)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Colorado Ski History Timeline, the 1930s
- 2Colorado Ski History · Pioneer Ski Area
- 3The Crested Butte News · Locals want to revive Pioneer Ski Area near CB South (February 2010)
- 4Colorado Ski History · Colorado Ski Lift Timeline
Photos
No photographs of Pioneer we may republish yet
Its old photos and trail maps live on the sites that collected them, and Google finds the rest.
Memories
What skiers remember of Pioneer, in their own words.
Facts
Location
38.8205° N · 106.8597° W · Colorado · Elk Mountains
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1939–1952
Closed after the 1952 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 2all 2, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain