How Did Ski Lifts Take Off? A Timeline of Carrying Skiers Uphill

Not so long ago, skiers had to ascend slopes under their own power before feeling the rush of zooming down them. Their options included painstakingly trekking uphill, with skins attached to their skis to prevent backsliding, or hiking with skis strapped to their back. Needless to say, few but hardcore mountaineers expressed interest.

That all changed with the invention of the first ski lifts in the early 20th century. Suddenly, “people who weren’t very strong athletes could enjoy the sport, and that’s when it really began to boom,” says Seth Masia, president of the nonprofit International Skiing History Association and editor of its magazine, Skiing History. Now, he says, skiing is open to “anyone with decent balance and a willingness to be out in the weather.”

Below is a timeline showing the evolution of ski lifts, from primitive rope tows to sleek modern chairlifts equipped with heating and WiFi.

c. 6000 B.C.: Skiing predates the invention of the wheel, writing and other pillars of civilization. The oldest known ski fragments, discovered in northern Russia, date to around 6000 B.C. But some experts believe humans have been traveling and hunting on skis since as far back as the last Ice Age. (The snowshoe, the putative ancestor of the ski, is believed to be even older.)

Ancient ski fragments, as well as rock art depicting skis, have been found not just in Russia, but also in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Altai Mountains of northwest China. These early skis resemble modern skis in many ways. A pair of 1,300-year-old skis in Norway, for example, had birch rope and leather bindings.

1860s: By the mid-1800s, skiing had become a popular recreational activity and sport in places like Norway. But getting up a mountain remained as difficult as ever—until the proliferation of railways, which, as Masia explains, were the first mechanical lifts used by skiers. “When nations began extending their rail networks up into the mountains,” Masia says, “skiers quickly figured out they could ride the train to the top of the pass, jump out and ski back down.”

He says the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s brought intrepid skiers to Donner Pass in California and to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. In Europe, meanwhile, skiers began traveling by rail up into the Alps. “The railroads are what made downhill even possible,” Masia says.

Although he never uncovered any direct evidence, Juan José Lapuerta, an engineer and International Skiing History Association board member who authored a book on ski lifts, suspects that the world’s first ski lift dates to this time. Oral history suggests that at some point gold miners repurposed a funicular ropeway, normally used to haul ore, to transport themselves up California’s Eureka Peak. “In winter the miners had nothing to do,” Lapuerta says. “So they went up with the ropeway and went down skiing.”

1907: A motorized rope that pulls a sled up a ski jumping hill in the Austrian Alps became the world’s first documented ski lift, according to Lapuerta’s research. “At this time, ski jumping was a very famous and loved sport in this area,” says Lapuerta, who lives nearby.

1908: To entertain his winter guests, German farmer and innkeeper Robert Winterhalder installed a watermill-powered overhead cable—connected to a series of support poles—with hitches to carry tobogganists and skiers up a sloping meadow. “This is the first ski lift like the ski lifts nowadays,” as well as the first lift to be patented, Lapuerta says. Two years later, Winterhalder built a second iron-beamed ski lift that was powered electrically. Both were dismantled during World War I, purportedly so their parts could be repurposed for the German war effort.

1910: As Winterhalder revolutionized European skiing, the organizers of a winter carnival in Truckee, California, near Lake Tahoe, installed a steam-powered tow. Although it was designed for tobogganists, skiers began riding it as well. “That’s the first mechanical conveyance that we know of in North America,” Masia says.

1928: Guido Reuge of Switzerland invented the fixed-heel binding, right around when Rudolf Lettner of Austria developed the first skis with steel edges. This facilitated “the big split between cross country and downhill,” Masia says. Groups dedicated specifically to downhill, or alpine, skiing began forming, including the Downhill Only Ski Club in Switzerland. By the time downhill skiing was added to the Olympics in 1936, skiers are desperate for new and faster ways of getting uphill.

1931: Using a four-cylinder Dodge engine for power, Alex Foster created the first known rope tow in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, Canada. Soon after, similar rope tows began appearing in Vermont, Switzerland and elsewhere. “You just have to grab the rope and hang on tight,” Masia says. “It was super cheap to put up. All you needed was a car or truck engine and something to use as pulleys.”

1934: Designed by Swiss engineer Ernst Constam, an overhead cable lift with single-passenger J-bars—soon to be replaced by double-passenger T-bars—went into operation in Davos, Switzerland—and was almost immediately copied in the United States. Unlike with rope tows, “you don’t have to hang on [to these lifts] with arm strength alone,” Masia says. “You stand on your skis, and the bar tucks behind your butt.”

1936: Until this year, all ski lifts were surface lifts, meaning skiers remained on the ground as they were pulled uphill. The first elevated chairlifts came courtesy of the Union Pacific Railroad Co., which developed a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, as part of a campaign to boost passenger rail travel. Tasked with developing state-of-the-art ski lifts for the resort’s opening in 1936, James Curran, a Nebraska engineer and non-skier, took inspiration from aerial pulley systems for loading bananas. Overcoming the skepticism of his boss, he ultimately concocted a plan to transport skiers in single-passenger chairs suspended some 20 feet off the ground.

Curran’s two original chairlifts gained 1,150 feet and 634 feet in elevation, respectively. Three additional chairlifts, with steel towers, were added a few years later on a taller mountain in the Sun Valley area. Partly due to the expense of constructing and maintaining them, chairlifts remained relatively uncommon at first. But more ski resorts gradually installed them as skiing exploded in popularity in the post-World War II years. The United States even funded the construction of ski lifts in Europe through the Marshall Plan, Masia explains. “It was a way to rebuild the economies of small towns and cities in the Alps,” he says.

These days, there are many ways to get up a mountain, from gondolas to “magic carpets.” But Masia says chairlifts, which can fit up to eight passengers per chair, remain by far the most common form of uphill transportation at North American ski areas.