New book details Disney’s attempt to build a ski resort and ties to Vail

A little-known piece of Disney history has seen renewed interest in recent years, culminating with the release of “Disneyland on the Mountain” in September.

The book is about Disney’s attempts to build a pair of ski resorts in California at Mineral King and Independence Lake, neither of which were successful.

The authors — Colorado residents Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer — spent years researching the details, and their narrative paints a vivid picture as if they witnessed the events themselves.

Glasgow and Mayer dig into Walt Disney’s skiing history before pursuing his own ski resort, first as an investor in Sugar Bowl in the 1930s, later as the producer of “The Art of Skiing” starring Goofy in the 1940s, and later still as a prospector of a potential ski area at Mount San Gorgonio near one of his homes in Palm Springs in the 1950s, and finally as the director of pageantry at the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley.

As Walt begins getting serious about his ski area at Mineral King in an area that is, today, part of the Sequoia National Park, he’s stricken with cancer, and the effort continues into the 1970s after his death.

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The book ends by detailing a partnership between Disney and Vail in the 1980s, spanning 50 years of events related to Disney’s interest in skiing.

The descriptions are vivid and the characters are well developed, with the story following a basic setup, conflict, resolution format that keeps it moving along. One of the characters is David Brower, a former 10th Mountain Division lieutenant and the first executive director of the Sierra Club, who goes from supporting the Mineral King area for ski development to opposing it once Disney gets involved, setting the scene for the fight to come.

At times, the authors appear to lament the fact that the resort did not get built, but they still manage to convey the sentiment that Brower and others draw from in their opposition to it.

Brower “had thought skiing would work well at Mineral King, but he was envisioning a small area like the one he was used to a Badger Pass, not the large commercial development the Forest Service seemed to have in mind,” the authors write. “He had heard that Walt Disney was in serious consideration for the development, and who knew what sort of gaudy monstrosity he was planning.”

The Forest Service (spoiler alert) does end up selecting Disney for the development, despite interest from other high-powered developers including wealthy stockbroker Robert Brandt. The authors uncover an interesting irony in examining Brandt’s connection to skiing through his wife — Hollywood star Janet Leigh — who was discovered as an actress while skiing at a different Disney-affiliated ski area, Sugar Bowl in Northern California. Sugar Bowl has a lift and runs bearing the Disney name after Walt Disney contributed a $2,500 investment into Sugar Bowl’s development in the 1930s.

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After the Forest Service selects Disney over Brandt, the fight to stop the resort is ramped up, and the authors trace it to the bitter end, using details from the courtroom battle that ensued, including details uncovered in another recent book written on this subject, Daniel P. Selmi’s “Dawn at Mineral King Valley.”

But while Selmi focuses on the Supreme Court case itself, Glasgow and Mayer branch out into Disney’s involvement in all of skiing and outdoor recreation, overlapping their narrative into the company’s other major effort to build a different ski area in California, Independence Lake, and where that went wrong.

Finally, in ending in Vail, the authors reveal how a connection between Vail and Disney came about, resulting in something many 30- and 40-somethings may remember well, skiing with Goofy on Vail Mountain.

It was actually Sport Goofy, a more athletic cousin of the well-known Disney character, who Vail had licensed for use on the slopes. While the deal is often romanticized to trace its origins to a chairlift ride between former Vail owner George Gillett and Disney president Frank Wells, who had a home in Vail, Glasgow and Mayer detail an altogether different beginning to that story.

After interviewing former Vail Mountain president Mike Shannon, who worked under Gillett as former Vail Mountain president, Glasgow and Mayer conclude that the Sport Goofy deal came about because Shannon knew Wells due to his former work in film financing at First National Bank in Chicago, where he worked with Wells.

The Sport Goofy deal came together as a result of Shannon’s continued relationship with Wells, the authors write in “Disneyland on the Mountain.”

“Disney created the costume and invited a handful of Vail employees to receive mascot training at Disneyland, and Sport Goofy — wearing a ski cap and goggles on top of his head and sporting a bright red-and-yellow ski suit — made his official Vail debut at the 1989 World Championships, cutting the ribbon at the event’s opening ceremony at the resort’s Red Tail Camp,” the authors write.

But that’s not quite true. Sport Goofy actually made his Vail debut years earlier, during the 1986-87 season, which was well documented in the local press at the time.

In an August 22, 1986 article, Vail Trail columnist Mark Huffman writes that he heard a rumor that Vail had received the rights to use Disney characters on the slopes for that upcoming season, and in a subsequent article published on Nov. 28, 1986, those rumors are confirmed in a story titled “Vail gets Goofy for use in children’s skiing programs.”

Wells is quoted in the story, saying he thinks Sport Goofy “is especially appropriate because he inspires the average weekend athlete to get involved solely for the fun of it.”

In 1994, Sport Goofy made his final appearance at Golden Peak, “after a seven-year stay entertaining kids and adults at Vail and Beaver Creek,” the Vail Trail reported.

In “Disneyland on the Mountain,” Glasgow and Mayer note several other ways in which Vail was influenced by Disney, as well, crediting the relationship with Vail’s rise to become No. 1 in the popular ski polls of the time.

“Shannon and Gillett ensured that all the resort’s employees were training in a Disney-style ‘customer first’ model of service, and they gave them name tags that listed their hometowns, giving guests more potential points of connection with the resort staff,” Glasgow and Mayer write. “Like Disney, Vail’s new leadership focused on cleanliness throughout the resort; the company also invested in daycare and childcare facilities and even sent managers and children’s instructors to Walt Disney World for inspiration. Over the course of a few years, Vail had become a Disney-inspirted ski area, and it was a rousing success: in 1989, Vail was ranked number one on Ski magazine’s annual list of the best ski resorts in the country and Snow Country magazine’s list of the top thirty-five vacation ski resorts in the United States.”

“Disneyland on the Mountain” is available from Rowman & Littlefield publishers.