Louise K. Oliver

Snowmass Village Oral History Project
C233 Louise Oliver 2005.055.0001

Anna Scott [00:00:08] All right. This is an oral history of Louise K. Oliver and her experiences in the development of Snowmass Village and Ski Area. Interviewed by Anna Lookabill Scott on the 12th day of October in the year 2005. First, I just want to thank you, Louise.
Louise Oliver [00:00:24] Oh, glad to be here.
Anna Scott [00:00:26] We appreciate you participating in this project and doing the oral history for the development of Snowmass Village and the resort, and I just wanted to ask you if you had any questions or comments you wanted to make beforehand.
Louise Oliver [00:00:39] No, I’m ready to get started talking.
Anna Scott [00:00:42] Okay. Well, then, please state your full name as it is now and what your maiden name was and any previous married names.
Louise Oliver [00:00:53] Okay. My name now is Louise, and I use the middle initial, K., Oliver. And the K actually is my previous married name, for Kuhn. K-U-H-N. And with two children, I made it easier to just keep that as the middle name. My maiden name was Jackson, and I have no middle name, so it worked out well to have a middle initial.
Anna Scott [00:01:18] Okay. And when were you born and where?
Louise Oliver [00:01:22] I was born in Salt Lake City on August 25th, 1937. And when I was four, I moved with my family to Denver. My father was going to medical school at the University of Colorado, and I’ve lived in Colorado ever since.
Anna Scott [00:01:40] All right. And did you go to school then in Colorado?
Louise Oliver [00:01:43] Uh-huh. Grew up in Denver, went to all the public schools there. And then went to college in Fort Collins at what was Colorado A&M, and while I was there, it changed to Colorado State University.
Anna Scott [00:01:55] Okay. And you said you were married before. And what was his name?
Louise Oliver [00:01:59] My husband’s name was Heiko. We were married in 1958 and lived in Denver for a few years. And then in 1962, the winter of ’62 and ’63, we moved to Aspen. And we had two children at that time. Heidi was, when we moved to Aspen, Heidi was just about three, and Eric was one.
Anna Scott [00:02:26] So that answers the question when you moved here. Did you ever visit Aspen prior to that?
Louise Oliver [00:02:31] Aspen was part of my growing up. My dad, being in the medical profession, got to know a Doctor Burlingame. And we have a large family. I’m the oldest of ten children, and not very many people invited us to their house or to share things with them, because we’re kind of overwhelming as a family group. But Dr. Burlingame worked with my dad
down at the University of Colorado and invited him to use their cabin by the airport for our family. So we started coming up during the summers and using the Burlingame home there.
Anna Scott [00:03:14] Approximately what year?
Louise Oliver [00:03:16] Uh, in the ’50s. And at the same time, then, of course, we were interested in skiing. About the time I was 16 or so, all of my brothers and sisters started skiing, and we would come up and enter the family ski races. I think it was over spring vacation. So our family as kids growing up came here quite a bit for the summers, and then the ski events in the winter.
Anna Scott [00:03:47] All right. So your first job here was…
Louise Oliver [00:03:54] It was at Aspen Highlands. Heiko was actually hired to be in the marketing department, and we kind of worked together as a team. But Whip Jones hired… needed someone in the office, so he hired me to work in the office and Heiko was out on maintenance. And then when the winters came, he did the public relations and ski racing and all of that marketing, sort of on-site marketing. And I opened up the first nursery school at Aspen Highlands, and that was my winter employment, and we did those sorts of things until 1967.
Anna Scott [00:04:35] And in 1967, is that when you went up to Snowmass?
Louise Oliver [00:04:38] Uh huh. 1967, we left Aspen Highlands, and actually I spent that first winter that… the first winter that Snowmass opened, I spent at the downtown office where McDonald’s is now, and I worked for the Ski Company. I made passes. That was my job. And my husband’s job was out of Snowmass running the recreation department. And so together we’d work on sleigh rides after, in the evening and, you know, events for groups that came in and that sort of thing. So the first summer of Snowmass, I was downtown, and my husband was in the sports arena out there. The interesting thing too about that was that we had been living at Aspen Highlands, and when we left our employment with Whip, we moved out of the Aspen Highlands, rented at Snowbunny for the summer, and while we were building our own home, and our own home was in Meadowood. And we got a nice deal on a lot there because it was considered too far out of town, and that, so therefore, that first winter we didn’t move into the house until December. Here we were, trying to build a new house at the same time that Snowmass was being built, and that was a monstrous project to get the base area opened at Snowmass. So we were competing to get tradesmen to come out and work on our house when they were really busy trying to get Snowmass open.
Anna Scott [00:06:22] Oh, wow. You could see it happening again. So after that first summer, did you end up then starting to work in Snowmass?
Louise Oliver [00:06:32] Yes. After that, the next summer, the golf course opened at Snowmass, and my husband Heiko was the golf pro, and I worked with him at the golf course. I ran the shop, he ran the golfing, and kids came to work with us. So it was the golf and tennis area that first summer, and I was doing the books for them. And at the end of the summer, the accounting office, which was then run by American Cement or, you know… it was not Snowmass Resort Association yet, but I then left. By then I wasn’t working for the Ski Company. I was working for the developers of the ski area, and I worked in the offices there at the, on the mall for… until 1972. And in that time period, ’68 through ’72, I worked in the Resort Association doing various things but went right through the accounting office first. That’s where I moved into
it. Then, as different opportunities would open up, I ended up being in property management for a couple of years. And then, through that, I became involved with the Snowmass base village, so to speak… what we thought of as the base village at the time. And it was really very separate from the Ski Company, and the Ski Company ran the mountain, did their thing. We ran the village, and I became very experienced in working with the guests in the village and the different businesses there. And the most valuable thing, I think, was picking up the accounting background that went on with it in those early years. So then in 1972, an opportunity opened to go to work for the Ski Company. And meanwhile my husband had been working, sometimes for the Ski Company, always for the golf course, and so it was kind of all mixed in together. We were familiar with the development on both sides. So in ’72, I became what they called the area secretary for the Snowmass Ski Area. And from ’72 and for the next 12 seasons, I was working for the Aspen Ski Company with Jim Snobble and Don Rayburn and…
Anna Scott [00:09:21] I was just going to say, you had mentioned in your work that you worked with Jim Snobble, Don Rayburn, Jesse Caparella, Tom Marshall, Art Bowles, thank you, Bob Flockhart, Fred Smith, Larry Beidleman. See? There you go. And so in what respect did you kind of work with each of these people?
Louise Oliver [00:09:50] Well, it began as I was area secretary. And what that meant was, they needed someone at the base to answer phones, radios, that sort of thing. And during the winter time, it was mostly just relaying communications, that sort of thing, snow reports sometimes. Just the administration receiving people as they came in, and our offices were at the bottom of Lift Two, it was called, straight across from the mall.
Anna Scott [00:10:25] So Lift Two, is that where the Burlingame…?
Louise Oliver [00:10:27] Yeah. If you look at the mall and walk straight across the slope, that’s where our offices were.
Anna Scott [00:10:33] Oh, where the Bears camp…
Louise Oliver [00:10:37] Yeah, yeah. That’s right, where the kids are.
Anna Scott [00:10:39] Where the kids camp area is.
Louise Oliver [00:10:42] Yes. And we were at the bottom of the lift at that point, and there was an office there. There was sort of an entrance where a receptionist office, and each of the different department heads had space to work there. And the maintenance, like Ski-Doos, was just right down the hill from us. So until they opened up the big office at the bottom of Fanny Hill, that’s where I worked and that’s where I started. So the winter time, you just keep things moving, pass messages along, collect information on different ways to help the administration, get reports in to the Ski Company office. It was a Ski Corp, then.
Anna Scott [00:11:29] A Ski Corp, yeah.
Louise Oliver [00:11:30] And then, when summer would come, it was like switching to a totally different job. And I was year-round. That was one reason I wanted it. First of all, I was really tired of property management, and I wanted to get into something involved with the mountain operation itself. And so in the summer time, boy, the day the lifts close, it shifts just immediately into a construction site, and then it was a matter of taking phone calls, passing
messages on the radios, helping get supplies delivered, coordinating all of that, and so, very much an administrative assistant type position.
Anna Scott [00:12:21] Was that directly under Jim Snobble?
Louise Oliver [00:12:23] He was our area manager. That’s right. And, you know, each of the ski areas operated very independently. Of course, all worked for the Aspen Skiing Company, but we were our Snowmass group. And, then as the years went by and we moved down to the bottom of Fanny Hill, and the longer I was there, the ski area was growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, you know, a 20, 30, 50% increase in skier days was nothing. It just… I used to…oh, I did like to keep statistics, and I started doing that from the beginning. And our chart of attendance was just out of sight. And it was very exciting. So, you know, there was always this expansion going on; we were in an expansion mode. We got our new office at the bottom of Fanny Hill and a big maintenance facility down there then, right in the middle of things. So as time progressed, it became clear that I could be helpful coordinating with the resort, because really, the Ski Company was very much a mountain operation type company. And yet, Snowmass was obligated to work with the Resort Association, and no one particularly wanted to do that, and it was an area I was very comfortable in. And I’d done a lot of organizational stuff, and I was a school teacher before I came to Aspen. So it worked well for me to kind of coordinate with the resort itself. And because I had worked in that arena and knew their side of the story a little bit, it was a natural fit. So that’s kind of how I made a niche for myself, I think, with the Ski Company. I was the only female working there until the ski instructors were on board again. But that was never a problem. Everyone was good to work with and considerate and appreciative of what you could do to help them. And I felt like that was my job, to make their work easier. And I could see that coordinating communications all made a big difference. So I would end up going to meetings for the Resort Association and represent the mountain. And the other thing that I could be helpful with, since none of the other managers necessarily enjoyed the accounting end of things, I would deal with the budgets and interpreting where we stood with those, and then, you know, you just picked up more and more experience. It finally got to where I was covering quite a bit of the administrative responsibilities when Jim Snobble would be gone in the summer or someone would need extra help. And then they started assigning projects to me. So, I remember my first big project was to put together the plan for Burnt Mountain and work with the Forest Service on that, but that was a long time ago. But we had a lot of good ideas then and to kind of watch how it’s NOT progressed over the years has been interesting.
Anna Scott [00:15:57] Have you been paying attention to the new developments?
Louise Oliver [00:15:59] Yes. That was very exciting.
Anna Scott [00:16:02] It’s interesting to see how history repeats itself.
Louise Oliver [00:16:04] Mhm. So, it was a matter of being in the right place when different opportunities would come along. And I was able to assume more and more responsibility. And then I was hiring office staff to do the reception work and that sort of a thing. So then I was able to more directly be an assistant for Jim Snobble or the other departments. Customer service was a big thing for us. We hadn’t had a customer service position before, and so it made sense that I would organize that, get the first customer service people going.
Anna Scott [00:16:49] As you were seeing the development of the ski area and growing, what did you notice about the town of Snowmass? Did you notice changes or major turning points?
Louise Oliver [00:17:01] The town of Snowmass was… I think in the beginning it lacked density. You know, you had some homes in Mountain Ranch, you had some at the slope, and a lot of the homes weren’t lived in year-round. So it really just seemed like, especially working for the Ski Company, it seemed like a suburb of Aspen, just spread out. But as time got going, you got, you started to see the same faces and the same people. And then there became kind of a center with a newspaper and a bank, and it started to seem more like a community. And people were proud of the area. Now, there weren’t too many decisions to be made as far as being part of a community. Everyone… decisions were being made by everyone else. The mountain made the decisions when we’d open and that sort of thing. The resort association brought summer activities and conference centers. But it was interesting for me to watch that, slowly, leadership would arise. One of the strongest things I remember, and liked to be a part of is, one of my supervisors in the customer service area was Jim Hooker, in the very early days, and he thought this was an interesting way to get started with the ski area and be part of that during the summertime. And it’s, you know, you really feel left out of things around here if you’re not involved in some way. And he was just a wonderful assistant as far as getting that developed and keeping the people working for him going positively. And, of course, they lived in Snowmass, and you started to see then, that there… and through his eyes, I could see some of the community developing, that they were focusing on the ski area. There was a pride developing that there hadn’t been before. Um, you know, everyone said, “Well, yeah, I like living out here,” but no one would really stand up for the… Snowmass, as such, especially since the mountain was managed by the ski area.
Anna Scott [00:19:35] You lived there until the early ’80s or mid ’80s. And so you really did see it develop. When do you think there was really kind of the core of the town council and everything really kind of developing?
Louise Oliver [00:19:50] Um, I don’t remember the dates, but when they did get to the point of having a council that would operate, it was a very sincere, helpful council. And my job at the ski area was to go to the meetings and represent the ski area and keep the ski area informed. I realized that there was a big division between the two for a long time, and it was tough to bring the two together because their interests were really in two different directions. So I would attend as many of those meetings as I could and represent the ski area but also try to communicate back some of the needs of the village, for instance, opening dates and different things like that.
Anna Scott [00:20:43] Well, there was the Snowmass Resort Association, right? Snowmass Village Resort Association, and then eventually it became a town council. Was that kind of developed out of… or do you know…?
Louise Oliver [00:20:55] Well, the Snowmass Resort Association I would think of as very commercial. And the people that I remember on the Snowmass Resort Association didn’t necessarily even live in Snowmass. You know, it was their work. They were doing this professionally, and some of them have gone on to be the top marketing people in the ski business.
Anna Scott [00:21:21] Oh, yeah? Like who?
Louise Oliver [00:21:22] Well, like Jerry Jones. That’s one that comes to my mind. And so, we had some really dynamic people doing the resort development, but that didn’t necessarily make the local homeowners any happier. They didn’t have any connection. Now, I do remember when someone put together a conference in the summertime that went on for several years, of the
legal, the top legal people in the country, and they were there for several weeks during the summer, and they would have some contact with the locals. And that seemed to start some… a couple of those conferences started tying things together, especially during the summertime. I think the newspaper… again, I don’t remember the date when that came out, but when they started the Snowmass newspaper and then there was the magazine. And it’s the communication thing again, and developing some pride in their own community. But there wasn’t a great deal of conflict in the beginning. It was more of an understanding of, you know, kind of, where do we go from here? However, I was involved with some of the homeowners’ associations, and that was part of what made me feel like there wasn’t really a Snowmass community, because I noticed at the homeowner meetings, they came from other parts of the country, they, you know, to control what was going on with the lodges up and down the… and the units up and down the…
Anna Scott [00:23:11] Snowmelt Road?
Louise Oliver [00:23:12] Yeah, the whole side, both, the side of Snowmelt Road, that’s what really, where it really began. But the homeowners, spread around in different locations, again, didn’t have enough density really to…
Anna Scott [00:23:26] I was going to say, what do you think the population kind of was back then? When you first got there? It was pretty small?
Louise Oliver [00:23:32] Well, you know that first, like when the ski area first started in ’67, they were selling lots. There were zero… Anderson Ranch, you know, you’d have Anderson Ranch down there. And then they built the townhomes down there by the tennis courts. But the developers were building all of that. {Break in recording}
Anna Scott [00:23:58] We had to stop there just for a little interruption, but we’re back. And we were talking about kind of the population density of the early days of Snowmass.
Louise Oliver [00:24:07] So really like ’67 – ’68, the big effort was to sell lots, and they were able to get some big homes built along Wood Run and things like that. But again, mostly, not for the people that were going to live there. Now my kids were going to the Aspen Public Schools and slowly some of their friends were living out in Mountain Ranch, different things like that.
Anna Scott [00:24:31] Hold on one second. {Pause} So they lived out on the ranch?
Louise Oliver [00:24:36] Yeah. And then it made it start to feel like it was more of a community. And the kids felt a little more like it. In fact, the school bus finally was bringing more kids out, and my children would sometimes ride out and then be at the ski area with their dad in the ski shop after school, that sort of thing. So I think families made it seem more like a community. As far as population numbers, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but it wasn’t very… certainly wasn’t very dense in the beginning because you had the big rush to get all of the guest accommodations built, and it was slower getting the homes in. So it’s amazing to me now to see how it is. But by the ’80s there were… late ’70s, oh even mid ’70s, there were families and homes and a community, and they were making decisions about their community. And at some point, that was incorporated. There was always the confusion about the name. At first it was Snowmass-at-Aspen, and that was very much a marketing situation. The marketers for the fellows that came out from California said, “Well, how are we going to market a ski area called Snowmass? And we want people to know that it’s close to Aspen.” So we got this hyphenated Snowmass-at-Aspen, and finally they got away from that. But that was a big argument. And I
think that may be a point of when that could be a community again. But then you had the confusion of Old Snowmass and Snowmass Village.
Anna Scott [00:26:28] Yeah.
Louise Oliver [00:26:31] I always thought that was kind of a bother, that they could have figured out a better naming situation. And yet, you know, it’s kind of worked out.
Anna Scott [00:26:44] People understand?
Louise Oliver [00:26:45] Strange ways.
Anna Scott [00:26:48] So going back to some of the people you worked with, I guess, just kind of, if you can sum up like a few characteristics about some of the people, it would be great, just to have an idea of like Jim Snobble, of course, that you worked under.
Louise Oliver [00:27:05] Well, I always felt like I was working with the real pros. And there was no doubt about it that in, certainly in Colorado, and I always felt in the whole nation, that the Aspen Ski Company really were the ones that knew how to run a mountain, And I could see by the way people would follow what we were doing, that we were doing it right. We did the customer service mode. We were the first ones to start that. The bus transportation, getting people back and forth, that part of serving your customers better. And individually, I think that that’s what I would say stood out with each of these people. That Jim Snobble as the area manager was a very dedicated, sincere, compassionate person. And they worked together nicely. They wanted the best for the mountain. And, Don Rayburn, just a solid guidance all the way along with people. But as much as anything, I appreciated the sharing and the working together. It was a wonderful team. At one time, they did send us to some middle management classes in Denver, and we had never really defined the roles that completely until then. But we realized that this was a middle management group, and a lot of the things that they brought up, we really had figured out on our own. It’s not too many jobs, especially anymore, where you see the stability that we had, the same people year after year after year, and you just naturally get to work together. I guess I missed that when I moved on and did some other project management jobs later, in other places. My gosh, people have a hard time working together, and it does take a while for a new group to work out their little differences because they were individuals. Every one of those people were strong individuals in their own way, but they brought that to the group. They shared their power and their ability with the others.
Anna Scott [00:29:32] Had you guys all known each other from Aspen or Highlands or…?
Louise Oliver [00:29:35] I’ll tell you, I was the newcomer. They were in the… like ski school. I think Jim Snobble came from the ski school. They’d been part of the ski business for a long time. I moved into that, and that’s why I was able to contribute my ability with the budgets and the accounting and all because really, they’d worked through the industry. Jesse Caparella? I believe he started as a kid before he was even out of high school, working on lifts. Just a genius around the lifts. And Tom Marshall on the trails, you know? They just… they seemed to have found exactly what was right for them and would stand up for what they believed in. And just that teamwork was great. Then as the ski area grew, it became only natural that planning became a big part of it. And the Snowmass office had the planning aspect as well, for the Aspen Ski Company. That’s when the Ski Company was still trying to work out of the downtown offices that… before they moved to the Airport Business Center. And so then we had Jerry Blann and Tom Beidleman… and Tom Marshall started working with the planning people, and they were
doing planning for areas in Spain, um, Whistler Blackcomb. And then I was able to be indirectly part of that, getting reports back, getting things off to them, being just surrounded by that kind of environment. And that was fascinating, too. But that certainly added to the whole attitude, I think, in Snowmass. It was just grow, grow, grow and meet the needs of the public and do it the best way you possibly can.
Anna Scott [00:31:36] Can you think of any anecdotes that you… that just kind of make you laugh or anything about some of those people that just…?
Louise Oliver [00:31:47] Well, you know, I guess it got to be such a routine that nothing surprised you. So nothing really stands out. But the overall experience is exceptional. And it’s almost like, you know, you just expect them to be able to handle the problems with the helicopters when the construction ran into bad weather or something like that. And the amazing things that they could come up with to get a problem solved. And every one of them were wonderful problem solvers. So it’s more the generalities that stand out in my mind than any specifics. It was quite a change when we moved off of the mountain, in our little kind of expanded lift cabin, down to the lovely offices at the bottom of the mountain. And…
Anna Scott [00:32:46] Do you remember what year that was? Approximately?
Louise Oliver [00:32:49] It must have been around ’75, something like that. And each of the department heads had their own office with sliding glass doors. I mean, it was very upscale. And you could see that this was quite an adjustment, you know, because where do you put your greasy stuff? And you did have closets built in for our skis in each of the offices, but…
Anna Scott [00:33:18] The perks of working on the mountain.
Louise Oliver [00:33:19] And it worked. You know, it was an adjustment. And I think the big benefit there was it kind of forced everyone to be closer together, that it just… the setup of the office forced more communication, even just the coming and going in the mornings. But that was a big step for some of those folks that had never been off the mountain before. And then they just settled right in, and the way they went in and acted like that had always been the way they did things.
Anna Scott [00:33:54] You were looking at a photograph earlier today that kind of made you think about something in the past. It was a picture of D.R.C. Brown and… help me with some names.
Louise Oliver [00:34:05] McNamara was there, and the Coors. Yes. And that brought back memories because above the offices of the department managers down on the main floor, you went upstairs, there was this conference room, and that certainly helped with our meetings and things, but it was used for the Ski Company Board. The Ski Corp board meetings were held there, I think twice a year or something like that. There is a situation that I think about every now and then, and that reminded me of it, that picture of the conference room. First of all, it had windows all along one side of it, so you would look down over the reception room that people… skiers were coming in with problems or whatever it was. You could look down over them, but you were up above and separate from it all. Well, the board meetings, I’m sure it must have been one of the first board meetings that I helped set up, and it was to be the first one up there in that conference room. And it was going to be all day. And they needed sandwiches, it was going to be right through the lunch hour. So no one… you know, we weren’t doing catering or
anything like that. I had to run into town and pick up the sandwiches that had been prepared, and I was to bring back some beer as well.
Anna Scott [00:35:28] Run into Aspen? Run into Snowmass?
Louise Oliver [00:35:30] Into Aspen. There was nothing at Snowmass. Nothing. You know, it was great when the gas station showed up there, but there was no grocery store, so I had to go all the way down Brush Creek Road into Aspen to pick up the sandwiches and the beer and bring it back for the guys. Well, I got all the way back and put the stuff in the refrigerator. Someone opened it up and said, “Oh my gosh, didn’t you know we can only drink Coors beer?” And I didn’t know, you know? I’m not a beer drinker myself. I just picked up the packages, loaded them in the car and got right back. And I had to go back into Aspen and pick up Coors beer and bring it out, because we had two Coors on the board.
Anna Scott [00:36:17] Very important. That’s funny.
Louise Oliver [00:36:19] But that worked well. I believe it was Darcy that said, “Louise, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back into town.” Okay. And of course, you know, about the first year Brush Creek Road wasn’t paved. That was really hard on our vehicles. We all put in new windshields quite often. And tires. It’s hard on the tires to have those gravel roads.
Anna Scott [00:36:44] So it got paved after…
Louise Oliver [00:36:46] It did. Eventually got paved.
Anna Scott [00:36:47] And when did Owl Creek become…
Louise Oliver [00:36:49] Now Owl Creek, um… First of all, it was a school bus route, so it was maintained better than you might think, but no one really used it that much. I lived in Meadowood, so I drove out to Snowmass and back every day on the Owl Creek Road, and sometimes I could go all the way from Highway 82 to my office at Snowmass and never see another car going in either direction. You know, and this was like 7:00 in the morning or something like that. And then going back, the same. I liked driving Owl Creek the best, but it was even longer before that was paved.
Anna Scott [00:37:34] But yeah, it just got… I mean, it was not paved when I moved here, and that was in 2000.
Louise Oliver [00:37:40] And of course, it didn’t have much traffic then. You know, just the ranchers, you’d go past Stapleton’s and on up through, and just open ranch country. No homes. The school bus did go up to pick up the kids, so it did get plowed. But I could make, you know, really good time going back that way. It was a nice drive. In ’76, it must have been, about when Ted Bundy, the Ted Bundy event occurred in Snowmass. One of the guests there was missing and turned out to be one of the Ted Bundy victims. And so the sheriff’s office had come by our ski area office and asked us to please put out notices to all the help to be alert for anything they could help, you know? Did they see anything strange? What could they… be of help with this missing person? Carolyn Something was her name, I think. And so I wrote up a description of the woman, and she had long brown hair and was missing from the lodge, and passed those out. And, you know, no one saw or heard a thing. She… they never did find her. And so, in about February or March, I was going to work early one morning, on a Monday morning. I’d been off over the weekend, I think. So it was a Monday morning, and the sun was getting warmer. It was
starting to melt a little bit. Well, the banks on the side of Owl Creek were really deep at that point because they’d been plowing all winter, but they were starting to melt back. And as I came towards that sharp turn at the end of the ranches heading towards the ski area, I started to see… the sun was just coming up… and I was starting to see magpies up there. And I thought, “Well, I’d better watch out. Probably there’s a deer in the road that someone hit,” or something like that. So I slowed down a little bit coming around that corner, and I looked over to where all the magpies were, and I just glanced, but I realized it was a body. And I said, “Well, I’m not going to stop here. The best thing to do is go on to my phone at the office.” I called the sheriff and told him, “Look, go up to the turn on the divide there and just as you start downhill, you’ll see a body over on the bank on the side.” So they sent someone right out, and they couldn’t find it. So I had to go back up and say, “This is where I saw it.” And it was there, and it was the missing girl. She’d been thrown into the bank.
Anna Scott [00:40:40] Oh, wow. So what was that like in the community? I mean, such a small community to be…
Louise Oliver [00:40:46] You know, the community itself was really removed from the resort part, and they couldn’t even relate hardly. So it didn’t seem to make any difference at all, except they were fascinated with the fact that we were involved with the Ted Bundy thing. Well, now that was just the beginning. So that didn’t affect Snowmass too much because the woman had been taken from the lodge, but no one knew for sure.
Anna Scott [00:41:14] Right.
Louise Oliver [00:41:14] And so they just sort of lumped it all into an Aspen experience of some sort. And then, Ted Bundy escaped from the jail and on and on. And then the community of Aspen and greater Aspen became more involved in the Bundy thing. But as far as being concerned about the woman missing from the Snowmass Lodge, I don’t think it really had that much of an effect on anyone.
Anna Scott [00:41:42] I’m sure it had an effect on you?
Louise Oliver [00:41:44] I was dumbfounded. It never occurred to me when I saw the body. I thought… for some reason, I recognized it was a human body, not an animal of some sort. Even though when the sheriff’s deputies got up there, they couldn’t find it that easily. So I must have just glanced at it just right to catch that. But, you know, that was not spread around all that much. And I just kind of let… I didn’t have to go and… I was subpoenaed to go to court, but when all of the other things went on with Ted Bundy, they dropped the Colorado aspect of it. So I never did go to court, but I had a court date set in Colorado Springs to go testify.
Anna Scott [00:42:35] Very interesting.
Louise Oliver [00:42:35] So that was a little Snowmass event that happened in the year when, what I remember more about it was, the snows didn’t come.
Anna Scott [00:42:47] Oh, really?
Louise Oliver [00:42:48] That was a difficult year. Until after New Year’s.
Anna Scott [00:42:54] Oh, yeah. We were talking earlier about how you would get antsy about “the snow’s not coming” until, you know, November 10th, and you’d be, like, worried. So that was one of those years?
Louise Oliver [00:43:05] Yeah. The amazing thing is, all of the years I was in the ski business, from ’62 to ’84 practically, that was the only year that was just really a disaster opening. And we didn’t have snowmaking. So, you know, what could you do to accommodate that? And so in that ’76, oh, you were planning picnics on Independence Pass and things like that to try to entertain the people that did come to town? Because some families had reservations, and then the lodges didn’t want to give their money back and things like that. But that’s more of what I think people remembered about that year than the Ted Bundy stuff. We were really much into the ski business, you know?
Anna Scott [00:43:58] Yeah. Oh, yeah. It affects the whole town.
Louise Oliver [00:44:01] Yeah.
Anna Scott [00:44:03] About to end on this side, but I guess, you finally ended up leaving Snowmass, and kind of, what spurred that decision?
Louise Oliver [00:44:18] Well, there were some things leading up to that. As Snowmass grew and grew and was maturing as a ski area, actually, and the ski industry itself was maturing, the growth rate slowed down. Well, about this same time, the Ski Company was purchased by 20th Century Fox, and it was out of this earlier, closely held mode of… so we weren’t working. Our bosses, our corporate leaders were not necessarily the people in town, and…
Anna Scott [00:44:55] As it had always been before?
Louise Oliver [00:44:58] I felt at one point that 20th Century Fox, for instance, probably wouldn’t have known the difference whether we were in a bowling alley or a ski area. You know, you send in your financial reports and that’s what mattered. And that was disheartening for everybody. But we still had the mountain and our love for all of that that went on. But definitely the business was slowing down. The other thing that was happening was litigation was getting very tiresome. You can spend a lot of time giving depositions, and all of our managers ended up having to be concerned with that, with people suing the Ski Company over every little thing: injuries, environmental, whatever. And that wasn’t really what you got into business for. And yet you still had the balance. But my biggest reason for looking in other directions was I moved all the way from a ski area secretary through the different positions, and I really felt that I wanted more leadership in the ski area. And I could see that at the Aspen Ski Company, it wasn’t going to happen, that Jim Snobble would be there until he retired. And I felt I was… in a career development mode, which was important to me at the time. I really wanted to be able to advance more, and I felt very stymied between the ownership aspect taking away a lot of the administrative pleasure, so to speak, of running a ski area. And then the fact that I couldn’t really express myself in the way I wanted to. But what changed it then was I had an opportunity to go down to Sunlight and be the ski area manager.
Anna Scott [00:46:56] We’re going to stop you right on that note and flip it over to the side B and then… {Break in recording}
Anna Scott [00:47:10] …just talking about her move to the Sunlight ski area down in Glenwood.
Louise Oliver [00:47:19] And they were filling a position of area manager, ski area manager. And I felt like this was an opportunity that I’d been looking for and wasn’t able to see any of that kind of future with the Ski Company. And so I interviewed for that job and was hired for it and was really excited about working with that ski area. And it was a big change because Snowmass had been the biggest ski area of all of the mountains. And now this was, as I looked at the statistics and all, it was about a 10th the size of Snowmass in area and equipment and employees. And for me, it was a treat. It felt like playing house almost, you know? There were things that needed to be done, and because of my experience at Snowmass, I could see how we might get those accomplished. The disappointment there was that no sooner had I gotten through the first season, then I realized that really what I’d been hired for was because they wanted to sell the ski area, and they thought it would look good to have an Aspen manager to some New York buyers. Well, that led to a lot of conflict with the board, and I was getting tired of working in the wintertime and having your personal life, as well as your business life, really dominated by the seasons. And so I only stayed with Sunlight for two years and then moved to Denver. But I look back on those years at Snowmass as really being marvelous, especially as I talk to some other friends of mine now who are retired, and some of them are looking back and thinking, “I don’t know what I accomplished over my career” and that sort of thing. Whereas for me, it’s like a bright light. I don’t know where you would find an experience of being able to start with a ski area like Snowmass and work with it as it began and developed and matured. And then to see the community develop until it had its own mayor, a town council making decisions, you know, and having votes and elections, and certainly expanding, getting more services out into that area and somehow establishing their own identity. But for me, that was just an unbelievable experience of being able to give and to share and to help be part of growth like that.
Anna Scott [00:50:26] So what do you think of Snowmass today?
Louise Oliver [00:50:30] You know, I went riding, horseback riding, out at Snowmass this summer, and since I’m unable to ski much anymore, I don’t get up there on the mountain. But I was able to get on the mountain during the summer anyway, and it was a wonderful experience. First of all, because, you know, I know those slopes just like the back of my hand practically. But then I realized how things really have changed when I came on to what I call a graveyard, where all old equipment is dumped and stored. And that would have been the last thing in the world that would have happened when I was there with the group. That wasn’t tolerable. And I can see how it can happen as… now everything was new for us, so we had the luxury of not having too many old, retired parts and pieces. But that made me kind of sad. So from the mountain standpoint, that was disappointing. From the village standpoint, I have spent some time in the wintertime with the grandkids out there at the ski school program and things, and I’m impressed at the longevity of some of the ski instructors. As I stand around at the end of the mall and the classes are getting ready to go out, I think some things never change. And I had thought they were doing a wonderful job then, and I could see that they were still, after all these years. Unbelievable, some of them… still… yeah, really just amazing contact with their guests and their clients and setting an example for the younger instructors. So that aspect, I think, is nice to see. The maturing of the village is what you see with the change of businesses and different ones coming in and that sort of thing. But overall, what has to be the test, I think, is the attitude of the people that are visiting. And when I’m out there at Snowmass, I notice they’re happy people. They’re enjoying their visit. And as our goal was to make it family-oriented and yet fun for all levels and meet their requirements, I could see that was still going on. Nice to have a pizza place right there at the edge of the slope and a few things like that, you know? I keep thinking, well, that’s come a long ways from when there was just the Timbermill, and you couldn’t even hardly get a bowl of soup at the bottom of the mountain.
Anna Scott [00:53:22] Where did you see as the center of town when you lived there? And where do you see as the center of town now? Do you know what I’m saying?
Louise Oliver [00:53:31] I did live for a couple of years down in the townhomes on the Snowmass golf course, and so that gave me a bit of a feel. And I felt the center of the town, as soon as there was more than a gas station, was definitely… I think the bank, you know, by the time you get a bank, post office and a gas station, then the other businesses filled in. That became the town. I don’t think the mall ever felt like the center of town. The mall, for me, was always an extension of the ski area, and it was hard to make it seem appropriate in the summertime. However, I’ve been to some nice events in the summer, I mean, it’s a nice mall-type gathering area, but definitely you’d see the same familiar faces when you go to pick up your mail. It’s again the communication thing. So I think the difference was when there became a community that wasn’t just part of the resort. And I don’t think that was considered in the beginning, when Benedict and group put in the mall at that level. I think it was really felt that that would be the center and feel like the center of a village. But there weren’t livelihood things there. There weren’t the things that the families needed at that area. And so that has, you know, developed down in the lower part, and I can’t begin to visualize what the new Base Village is going to be like. My hope is that it integrates the two, and I always felt that that should have happened before now. I didn’t think that across the street, the highway, was a really good place for your community center to be, and yet it sort of has to be, the way the mountain’s built and all. But I think that the new Base Village is going to make it seem a little more integrated. And not just them and us.
Anna Scott [00:55:45] Right. You talk about how you were there in the beginning with all the construction, and now you see all the construction now. And it seems that that’s kind of been just the history of Snowmass, really, since the beginning of the ski resort part.
Louise Oliver [00:56:02] That’s right. It does seem like that’s just always part of it because it never settled down. I guess… you know, Aspen slowed down when the mines closed down. Well, the ski area business hasn’t necessarily grown at the same pace it did in the early years, but at least it’s still there. And therefore, you know, it just keeps moving along, and you have upgrades and new ideas, and almost anywhere that’s really thriving anymore seems to depend on the construction. Now it’s at the point of ripping out some of the old stuff and putting in the new. And that’s… you think, “Oh, man.”
Anna Scott [00:56:52] Your offices, I believe, are going.
Louise Oliver [00:56:55] Uh huh. Uh huh. And we saw that happen at Aspen Highlands. They’re gone, those original buildings. And so it will be a different flavor. And I think once the Base Village is established, the mall will have a little bit of a different function too. Not quite so, uh, seemingly isolated from the community, because it doesn’t seem to me like the community itself considers the mall a gathering spot necessarily. The visitors do, visitors certainly do. The transportation system helps. You can see families on buses. The local kids and the local families will be riding the buses up to maybe pick up something at the mall, or to meet a friend or something like that. But definitely, there’s a different feeling. I had lunch down at the… behind the Conoco station when I was… after horseback riding out there, and it was a nice feeling, the locals coming and going, and it sort of reminds me of old Aspen. It’s small enough, you know, and the way people were reacting with each other, like good friends and people they knew, and they knew the, you know, like, where were you last month and all of that sort of thing?
Anna Scott [00:58:25] Right. Do you have any special places on the mountain or around Snowmass that you kind of think about?
Louise Oliver [00:58:33] Well, you know, one year, well, several years when I was in that little office at the bottom of Lift Number Two, and then also when we moved down at the bottom of Fanny Hill, I was operating lunchtime nature tours because I’m a zoology major.
Anna Scott [00:58:54] Oh, really?
Louise Oliver [00:58:55] My degree was in zoology and botany, so I love the outdoors and that sort of thing. And for my lunch break, to get me out of the office a little bit, I worked with the Snowmass Resort Association, I said, “Look, I’ll do nature tours,” just a public relations type thing, and that’ll get me out. And so I loved that walk. I’d meet him on the mall, and we’d walk down towards the divide, and you couldn’t get anything too steep for people. But there was just wonderful things to show them and talk about and find places for a nice view and that sort of a thing. And so I still think very fondly of those days. And it was just an hour, and it would get me out of the office.
Anna Scott [00:59:41] I’ve hiked that trail.
Louise Oliver [00:59:43] Yeah. And it’s, you know, you’d see new things all the time, and the people really enjoyed it. It was an attempt, I said, “You know, we need to do something for the summer people.” And the rest of my mountain group were really into the construction business, and the resort people were really more into meetings and all. And so that was nice, I enjoyed that. So those are some of my favorite spots there. And as far as skiing, I always loved the… back to the early years, just skiing down from the Knob. I liked the angle of the slopes and that sort of thing, and they got to be real favorites. But then every time we’d open up a new section, you’d find your favorite spots there too, so… You know, there was so much to choose from. It was always difficult when we were doing the planning, figuring out how are we going to help people connect back to where they need to be? Because the experience of skiing Snowmass was so different than where they’d skied anywhere else. It was big, and they’d end up in the wrong area, and traversing isn’t the greatest. So that was always a concern. And we kind of… one time I even designed a route that you could take… which lifts to take up to get the most coverage of the mountain, that sort of thing, so… Because some people would just ski one lift, they’d get hung up and be afraid to go anywhere else. But I noticed in those early days, the rest of the community wasn’t involved all that much with the skiing, other than maybe helping out, like with Jim Hooker with the… being part of the customer services thing, but they seemed to be a little more involved with the golf course and the tennis. You know, that was really important for them. The Moebiuses were down there and different ones, so that then you got more of a sense of community in the summertime at the golf course and the tennis courts, simply because at least you had a clubhouse where they were a little bit focused. But… so it seemed more like… and then you could see people. In the winter, everyone’s so busy and working hard and that sort of a thing, but it never felt that they were too much part of the ski area itself. You know, if it was ski activities, they were visitors. The locals didn’t sign up for the sleigh ride and all that sort of thing.
Anna Scott [01:02:27] How long did your husband work at the golf course? Heiko?
Louise Oliver [01:02:34] Oh, let’s see, I think Heiko was there until ’75 or ’76, several years. So, it was the old original course, and, you know, now it’s totally different. Took it out and put in a whole new one, practically. It’s not at all like the original one, but he was… I can’t remember
exactly the years. And then, he always was involved with skiing with the Masters, the ski competition. But golf was his big love. And so he’d ski to keep busy in the winter, and he loved skiing, too, there’s no doubt about it. But golf was the most. And then, he ended up being manager of the Aspen Sanitation District. So then his later years were… he was employed there.
Anna Scott [01:03:34] Just kind of a last thing… some of the families that you remember in Snowmass with your kids. Can you remember any of those names?
Louise Oliver [01:03:45] Well, the Moebius family, they were good friends for everybody. And what I remember about Barb was she’d always direct people as to when they could start their outdoor planting, you know? And then another family that was involved with ours were the Kellys because they had hockey players. And they had come from the East, and so they were really good hockey players. And my son Eric played hockey with them. And so the Kellys, and they lived in Mountain Ranch. I had… one of my secretaries, Pam, I can’t remember her last name now, lived in Mountain Ranch and worked several years in the office and became a good friend of mine as well. And part of our responsibility at the ski area is to handle the FBI and the Secret Service when any dignitaries visit. And pretty much the same people would start getting assigned, you know, when the Kennedys were coming or whatever. And she actually got to know one of the Secret Service guys really well and ended up marrying him. So I always thought that was an interesting situation. Let’s see, some of the other families that I remember… yeah, let’s see, the head of security for the Ski Company, Cornish, Bob Cornish. He lived on Brush Creek Road, and what I remember about him is his hobby was Chinese cooking. I always thought that was so interesting. And he was excellent, you know? So when you think of Bob Cornish, you think of Chinese cooking, but, you know, what does that have to do with Snowmass?
Anna Scott [01:05:44] It’s the characters. The characters of Snowmass.
Louise Oliver [01:05:47] That’s right, that’s right. Other families… oh… Ruth and… The Snowmass Sun people… and her husband. They were wonderful people that really had a feeling for the community and trying to get people to behave as a community, writing articles and promoting it. And I thought that was outstanding. I’ll tell you, another person I remember from the drugstore out there at Snowmass was Ed Lucks. And the story there is that first he was at Crossroads Drug down here in Aspen, and then ended up, when they got the drugstore out at Snowmass, he went out to Snowmass. But I knew him before he came to Aspen, because my dad was a physician in Denver, and Ed was the local pharmacist. And when he moved up here, my dad said, “Well, be sure to go see Ed, you know, because he’s going to be up there now.” And everyone thinks of him now as the ski school and the wonderful program for the handicapped and all. But I remember him as my dad’s pharmacist first, and then, lo and behold, there he was and living out there in Snowmass.
Anna Scott [01:07:14] So he went away from the drugs and pharmacy and into the ski school and…
Louise Oliver [01:07:23] Yeah. So it was fun to watch that develop. You know, his passion for all of that, getting into this area obviously gave him the chance to do that. So I thought he was a real important aspect of that Snowmass community too… way beyond just what was going on in Snowmass. But I think because of the size of the area and that sort of thing, it’s been wonderful, some of the special programs that have developed with the Snowmass people.
Anna Scott [01:08:01] What are you doing now?
Louise Oliver [01:08:05] I’m retired now. I like to travel and come back to Aspen to visit. But my husband and I do desktop publishing. That was sort of the end of our professional careers, and so it’s still a nice hobby. And we do newsletters for families, our families, and different events like reunions and things, so that keeps us busy. And I enjoy working with the new computer technology and see how far it’s come over the years. One of my frustrations at the Ski Company in the early ’80s is there was no computer coordination at all, and the computers were coming in, and that seemed backwards. And at that point, I realized that some ski areas were moving beyond where the Ski Company was heading. Winter Park, for instance, I was aware already that they had a wonderful self-designed program for managing their snowmaking. Well, we were still at the stage here of saying, “Well, I don’t know about snowmaking,” you know, but we were getting it in. But they were able to move ahead rapidly, they didn’t have quite so much to drag along with them. And so that was, is a big change now. I mean, my gosh, when you see, scan ski passes to go up the mountain? I would have loved that. What we had to do to collect statistics were unbelievable. I’d usually have customer service do some counts. There were two weeks in March that I figured were kind of my average weeks, and we’d count different things that went on to come up with statistics. But now, oh boy. I took my granddaughter down to ride the summer chairlift, and I forgot to bring her pass. No problem. They pull it up on the computer, and I think, “Oh boy, it’s really changed a lot.” We had the clickers, you know?
Anna Scott [01:10:15] Oh, yeah. We still use those. Well, if there’s anything else you want to add or…
Louise Oliver [01:10:24] Well, I’d say that I really do enjoy coming back to Aspen. And I notice that it’s with great fondness, and I think most people have that kind of a feeling, but it’s because I really had a wonderful experience living here, and it does seem like home. So, that was one of the reasons I called the Historical Society last year and wanted to get started being a part of it in the way that I could. So now when I come up to visit family, I try to spend a few hours anyway, because I really do want to be, remain part of the Aspen and Snowmass group. I thought it was really fun when you got the new stuff from Snowmass, from the Snowmass history people, that we were able to make some headway on that, and I hope to see more of that go on.
Anna Scott [01:11:16] We have some more.
Louise Oliver [01:11:17] Because there were several of us that were collecting historical items at the ski area, and it’s hard for me to believe that that is now history. And yet I recognize that it is. So, it’s wonderful to see that it’s found a new home.
Anna Scott [01:11:35] That’s great. Quickly, just run through the names of your family, who and where they live in this area.
Louise Oliver [01:11:43] My daughter is Heidi, and my son is Eric, and our name was Kuhn when they were growing up. K-U-H-N. And now it’s… Heidi has married Patrick Gorbitz. So it’s Heidi Gorbitz, and my grandchildren are Cheyenne and Logan Gorbitz. They live on… near you, out on Midland. And so they, of course, now the kids are getting big and joining the Ski Club program and all that during the winter. Now my brother also lives here in Aspen Village with his wife, Susan Jackson, and she works at Walnut House and their daughter Lindsey, who’s in eighth grade at the public schools. So that’s my family. We, my brothers and sisters ended up coming to Aspen as a focal point because they all remember happy times here as kids, too.
Anna Scott [01:12:46] That’s great. Well, I just want to thank you for participating in the Snowmass History Project today, and I guess we’re going to now end our interview with Louise Oliver and Anna Lookabill Scott. And again, it’s October 12th, 2005. Thank you.
Louise Oliver [01:13:04] Thank you. And I enjoyed it.
Anna Scott [01:13:06] Me too.