Ted Ryan

Theodore S. Ryan interviewed by George W. Madsen, Jr.
MADSEN:
RYAN:
I
We’ve had a series of these “Commentary” programs recorded
for the Aspen Historical Society in which we talked about people
who made history here. Well, today we have a slight switch: I
am going to talk with one of the people who made the history.
His name is Ted Ryan. As most Aspenites know, he was one of the
three men closely associated with the original ski area in thi~
region- at Ashcroft.
Ted, I will be frank with you. When I heard that you were
in town and contacted you, I thought you were a much older person,
but here you are fairly young, as men go these days -certainly a~
history makers go- and I understand that since the mid-30’s, when
you were active out here with T. J. Flynn and Billy Fiske, you
have been president of the Connecticut State Senate and now you
are Republican National Committeeman, again from Connecticut –
your home state. Also I understand that you are one of the foremost
Aberdeen-Angus breed~rs in the United States.
Connecticut was cattle country.
I didn’t know
Well~ as a matter of fact, very few people do, George, but I
think with a little bit of diligence and a lot of good luck, we
have built up over the last 20 years one of the really good Angus
herds. And I can tell you~ for the fun of it I have always had
the ambition to come back and prove to my friends in Colorado that
we could raise good cattle. And this we’ve done.
MADSEN: How do you do that?
RYAN: Well, we bring them out to the stock show, the Denver Stock
Show, and we show them and sell cattle all over the place. I
always like to have a fellow like Bill Tagert recognize that an
Angus is a good animal, and that coming from Connecticut it could
be successful. We had the top selling bull at the Denver Livestock
Show this year.
MADSEN: This past January?
RYAN: Yes.
MADSEN: Fabulous! “Cowboy from Connecticut.”
RYAN: Farmer anyway- rancher.
MAD~EN: Getting back to Aspen in the mid-30’s- I guess we should
say the Ashcroft area, as much as Aspen, Ted. I’ve heard scuttlebutt
that Aspen was known as an old mining town – of course it was
but also that Harold Ross …. came from Aspen and made history with
the New Yorker magazine. That was a point in the town’s favor.
Where do you come into the picture, or where did you and Harold
Ross come into the picture?
RYAN: Well 9 I had a small association with Harold Ross in the early
days. Of course~ frankly, in the 30 1 s I think Harold was inclined
to less than appreciate the town of Aspen. He had gone on to New
York, and so forth 9 and Aspen was a pretty dead town in those days.
He might have remembered, or might have thought he remembered, when
– 2 –
MADSEN:
RYAN:
Mft..-~EN:
his family used to regularly attend the Metropolitan Opera Company
when it came to the Wheeler Opera House, and all that, but in the
middle 30’s when Ross’s close companions were James Thurber and
Bob Benchley, Ross didn’t boast about Aspen. Not many people in
New York recognized Aspen’s early appreciation for culture.
I know when Bob Benchley came out in 1936 with a brochure
called “How to Aspen” – and I think, George, this was the very
first bit of advertising that ever came out on skiing in Aspen
Ross was sort of curious about it all. “How did you ever get into
this, Benchley?” he asked. Benchley himself had never seen A~pen.
But he was at the time a close friend of a company of young men
who had laughed with him in Santa Barbara and dined with him in
“21” in those good old days when Thurber would draw priceless
drawings on the tablecloth. And when some of these friend~,
which will mean Billy Fiske and the rest of us, came to Benchley
in ’36, asking him to write the first brochure ever attached to
skiing in the Aspen area, Benchley went at it with gusto.
“How to Aspen!” I wonder how many people realize that Robert
Benchley was closely associated with Aspen way back in those days.
Well? if you ever took a look at this pamphlet I’ve got a
copy of here? you could see Jimmie Bodrero’s cartoon of Benchley
• on skis.
It looks like Benchley- Yeah- Right on the front cover.
– 3 –
RYAN:
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
RYAN:
Well, Bob was a good sport and a good friend, and if he wrote
a fanciful brochure on what was to come in this area, I think if
any of his remarks seem fanciful, nothing could be really more
fanciful than the real beginnings of Aspen as an Alpine skiing
area.
Ted, give us just a quick quote out of this brochure -a selected
paragraph. Can you find one?
Well, I guess it could be called humor in tho~e days. Anyway,
he writes in this little brochure about how he would “like
to clear up all this talk about Aspen.” He says that “Aspen,
Colorado is the place where you can indulge in winter sports
without having to get a passport, wrestle with the Atlantic, stop
in Paris at the expense of your health, and come all the way back
again.” He points out “the ·fact which seems to have eluded American
sportsmen in the pa~t- that we in this country have mountains:
and snow, both in excellent condition.”
You can see Benchley almost sneering when he said it.
He wasn’t a really great outdoor man, but he was a great
friend of all of us.
Well, as I say, there are a lot of tales that have been told
about the early beginnings, and some of them frankly are probably
~ more romantic than factual, and some of them of cour~e have been
printed and read, and reprinted and sort of “authenticated.”
– 4 –
I don’t know, if you want the real facts of things, we could talk
about them.
MADSEN: Let’s try that. Let’s go back to the mid-30’s then, and see
how Ashcroft and the idea behind it came about.
RYAN: Well, in the summer of 1 36, one Billy Fiske, who was an
American graduate of Cambridge College, England -and Who then
had been called home to go to work in the investment banking
corporation of Dillon Reed… While representing Dillon Reed in
California, Billy ran across some natives of Aspen, who I think
probably had deserted the town for what they thought were more
attractive climes .
• •>
Billy, let me say, in his years at Cambridge had discovered
the Swiss Alps, and being a rugged;.brave young man, had taken to
bobsledding and skeleton sleds, as any young Aspenite now takes
to skis. With classmates at the University, he also took to flying
and was one of the original members of what was then known as the
“Defense of London Squadron.” I think it was Squadron 601, an arm
of the British Royal Air Force. I think that this flying in those
days with the Cambridge college boys was sort of- a lark – partic~
larly for Billy, who .. ~could find more immediate risks and
challenges in captaining the U. S. Bob Team, as he did in 1932 and
’36, and in establishing year after year unbroken records in the
Cresta Run at St. Moritz.
– 5 –
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
RYAN:
Famous ski run over there?
It is an ice chute used for single skeleton sleds. I think
the British Army used to say that any man who would run the Cresta
Run could gain an officership almost automatically. It took brains
and daring and real guts.
And this was Billy Fiske.
This was your Billy Fiske. Billy was more of a bobsledder
than a skier, but one thing that he had was a love for the mountains
and a real heart for outdoor sport. I think, in fact, he
was rather sad when the exigencies of life pulled him back from
Europe and set him to work with Dillon Reed in New York. He
really loathed the confines of Wall Street.
They’re security bankers there -brokers?
Investment brokers, sure. But he had a good break because
the company sent him to sell and perhaps buy securities, you know,
in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, :~nd the rest; but his heart
was always in the Alps. Where Aspen comes in is by way of a
little meeting at a club, I believe, outside of San Francisco
where Billy, the bond salesman somehow met up with T. J. Flynn.
Now here comes the second man of the party- T. J. Flynn.
He was an old Aspenite, wasn’t he?
He was. I don’t think he was born here, but his father was
here for a long time. I think he was in the coal business and,
as I recall, he went north to Canada into the mining business.
– 6 –
T. J. certainly wasn’t born here, but he spent much of his youth
here and he really had a nostalgia for the town that he had left
behind. Anyway, as I get it from Billy’s closest associates out
in California, what T.J. was interested in was trying to s~ll
·, I ,··. I /
t1 )’1: I/’! I I(‘) ) ) J I t ,; . ‘ ·. I.’·’ I t\ (I. i. ,,, . ‘
Billy a mine. I think it was a silver min~- probably a silver
mine- and Billy was not at all impressed. Apparently, time after
time Flynn would phone him, trying to get him to invest. Frankly,
I think Billy sort of told him off. He said, “Look, I’m not interested
in a mine, and if I was I wouldn’t go for silver -I would
go for Homestead gold,” or something like that.
Of course, what Billy did have in the back of his head was
what we had all discussed -particularly in the winter of ’36
at the Olympics over in Europe: “Why in the world couldn’t we
find some place in the U.S.A. that’s got good mountains, that’s
got good skiing and winter sports possibilities?” Billy and his
friends knew that’s what Billy would want. He would much rather
have a mountain than a mine. I think that in the course of these
conversations about the mineral wealth of the Aspen area, Billy
began to add up the topographic terrain, the heights, the altitude,
the mountains, and so forth, and Billy said to himself, “Well, by
gosh, this Colorado country has what we have been looking for.”
MADSEN: Something like the Cresta Run?
Well, we had a toboggan chute and Crest Run and all these
– 7 –
things in mind. What we wanted was a real winter sports area for
the U. S. trade. Of course people had been diving off Mt. Washington,
and they were skiing around Berthoud Pass, and so forth, but
nothing on the grand scale had really yet come up.
Anyway, to get the real beginnings of Aspen, I’ll take you to
the mid-summer of 1936, when Fiske and three of his friends – two
of them college classmates from Cambridge {both of them on the
Cambridge Ski Team) plus Robert Rowan, who’s the R<>wa:n of the
famous Real Estate Company in Los Angeles – got aboard a single
motor Stinson and flew in toward the Roaring Fork. Flynn wa~ going
to meet them there and show them the countryside. Jim Heaton, who
later became Billy’s brother-in-law, was at the wheel. Heaton
stopped at Grand Junction~refueled ‘the plane, and was told that
there was sort or a polo field at Glenwood Springs which they
thought he could land on, and this indeed they attempted. Rowan
recalls that they overshot the field 12 miles, and circled and
turned, and without air-to-ground guidance and what not, finally
spotted a kind of golf course which they surveyed, I think four
times before Heaton dared crawl in.
Land they ~id, in the nick of time, and three days later
took off again with their lives in their hands and the rebirth
• of Aspen in their minds .. As they studied the limited stretch of
the polo field for the take-off at an altitude, you know, of more
– 8 –
than a mile high, Rowan complained at the power lines at the end of
the field. He alone of the company had never dared the Cresta Run
– all the others were real rugged sports – and was not quite willing
to toy with fate. So he said, “For goodness sake, give me 20 minutes
and I’ll get those wires down.” And this, in fact, he did.
While the others were jettisoning their luggage to lighten the
load … Rowan was on the telephone to a most cooperative head of
the power company down in Glenwood (I wish I could remember his
name) who said of course he didn’t want “to see anybody hurt” and
very obligingly got one of his mechanics to arrange to have the
wires lowered. And off they went -Fiske and Rowan and Heaton and
Paddy Green (a Cambridge boy) and they rose and turned west with
a big burgeoning thought
~ities in the Aspen area.
the firstt thought about Alpine acti-
MADSEN: When they were here~ Ted, what did they find in the Ashcroft
area? I think we can get ·a start on that before our time runs out.
RYAN: Well, I’ll tell you; Tom Flynn met them of course, and when
MADSEN:
RYAN:
Flynn and Fred Willoughby had taken them up in a four-wheel-drive
truck past the Midnight mine to a point, I think, on Richmond
Hill. .•
On the back side of Aspen Mountain?
That’s right. Well, of course they saw summer snows on the
fields of Mt. Hayden and Swiss meadows leading down to the junction
– 9 –
of Castle Creek and Conundrum. Nothing they had seen in America
had equaled this; and, as Rowan recalls, Fiske and Green, the two
hardy ones, raced the last 500 yards to the top of the hill, and
when Rowan calmly hiked it up, the two husks were lying exhausted
in the altitude, after a contest no Swiss mountain climber would
have ever attempted: The Swiss, you know, take a good, quiet,
gentle pace.
MADSEN: Certainly at 11,000 feet they do.
RYAN: Well, it was their enthusiasm. It was great. It was a wonderful
sight to see, and they thought they were on their way …
And now, I guess, as they winged their way t”o ward California,
the “big idea” was taking form. The idea was for a lodge to be
built on Bill Tagert’s meadows at the foot of Highland. That’s
the junction. (The little ranch was called Highland. In fact, I
think there was a settlement there.) And from this lodge the
intention was to have experts explore the mountains and map the
possibilities for winter sports; and a company, of course, to
support its development and to encourage others to invest was in
the offing. In the west, of course, Fiske and Rowan were the
early sparks, the first investors. In the east it fell my job to
represent the company.
I had known Billy in skiing and winter sports in Europe for
a long, long time… He was at the winter Olympics at Garmi~cb
Partenki:rchen.
– 10 –
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
So this is the way the Highland-Bavarian Lodge was built,
and thus was formed the “Highland-Bavarian Corporation” which
was of course to employ Andre Roch, the most eminent·swiss mountain
climber and avalanche expert anywhere. As a matter of fact,
he got his engineering degree at Oregon State University here in
the U.S.A.
Is that right?
He’s a marvelous man … We brought him out for the object of
studying the terrain.
Ted, I’m going to cut in right now, and complete this at
another program in the near future. We’ve got Andre Roch here
in Aspen, according to your story,:and the next time around we
will see what happens to the Ashcroft Ski Area. This sounds like
an old-time radio serial.
Ted, thank you very much for being my guest on “Commentary”
today.
* * * *
You have been listening to Ted Ryan, one of the three
original founders of the Ashcroft Ski Area, or the proposed Ashcroft
Ski Area, and that’s “Commentary” for today.
– 11 –
MADSEN:
RYAN:
MADSEN:
II
This is a continuation of the program with Ted Ryan, one of
the three original men behind what would have been the Ashcroft
Ski Area, the first development for skiing in the Aspen area.
Ted, it’s nice to have you back. I am glad I could catch
you for a few moments before you took off for your home in Connecticut.
The last time you were on this program we were talking
about the Highland-Bavarian Lodge – the lodge that was the focal
point of your ski development at Ashcroft. This was in 1936.
That’s right, George. You remember that Billy Fiske and his
friends landed in mid-summer of ’36, scouted the area, and went
home to telephone other ski enthusiasts to get things going. What
we did was to take options on two particular pieces of land – one
was Bill Tagert’s ranch at the junction of Castle and Conundrum,
and we took another option on “Tagert’s Lake Ranch,” we used to
call it, up the Roaring Fork. It’s abov~Jimmy Smith’s ranch.
We built at what was called “Highland” then -Highland
Meadows at Castle Creek- a lodge; and we thought that from this
attractive area we might expand the place and develop skiing at
the Little Annie Basin area, and Aspen Mountain, and so forth …
But things progressed after the experts got here.
Was this just a shack that you threw up at the junction of
• Castle and Conundrum?
Hardly a shack, George. It was designed by, I think, a fellow
– 12 ~
called Kaufmann, who I recall was the architect for the Santa
Anita Jockey Club.
MADSEN: The race track?
RYAN: Yes. Billy knew everybody out there -and Bob Rowan -and
it was decorated with these Bavarian figurines by the California
artist, Jimmy Bodrero. It was a very attractive, although simply
constructed place. It had a dining room, living room and a magnificent
big fireplace that heated both: and two double-decker
bunkrooms aimed to accommodate not only the Fi8kes, the Rowans
and the Ryans, but to cope with whomever we could lure into the
mountain range to explore the winter sports possibilities.
MA JN: And this building is still in existence out there?
RYAN: Yes it is indeed, and you can see … you might be able toreconstruct
the idea: There’s the main lodge and then there’s the
pump house and the ski room, and so forth, and adjacent to the
lodge, in similar architeriture, there was a barn and a hay loft
that housed two teams of horses and the Highland-Bavarian sleigh
which was then dtiven by our good friend Bill Tagert. And what
we’d do was load up the sleigh with skiers or prospective investors
and what not, and we’d clomp along up to the Little Annie
mine hut, at a cost of 50¢ a ride •• p
MADSEN: That’s mighty reasonable …
RYPI\J: … and from there we’d lead them up on skins up over Richmond
Hill and down through the trees into Aspen or back again down the • Iii ••
– 13
Little Annie slopes and through a trail that Billy and I helped
cut in the summer of ’36, back down to the Lodge.
Attached to the barn were living quarters of course, and a
work room for Andre Roch and Gunther Langes who came from the
Dolomites. He was a weather specialist and a climber.
And so, while we were pulling in people from Boston and
Pittsburgh, and California and Chicago and all the rest -as paying
guests at $7.00 a day American Plan- Roch and Langes were
scouting every mountain in the area and they were tabulating
weather and snow conditions. In the end, of course, Roch was
active in a hundred ways – he of course put the spark of skiing
into the natives of Aspen. He started the first ski school on
the slopes -we used to say were o~~~he Maroon Creek road. I
wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same slopes as Whip Jones’s
Aspen Highlands. We had ski school out there on Sundays, and all
the elders and the youngsters -the Willoughbys and all the rest,
took lessons from Andre then.
That was the beginning of Alpine skiing in Aspen. Anyway, at
the end of the year, Roch and Langes came up with a report -a
well documented report – that in their opinion, while Little Annie
and ~he Aspen Mountain offered better skiing than America had yet
• seen, the Hayden complex, as reached from Ashcr.oft, would surpass
the best ski areas then known in Europe – with the possible exception
of Davos which had a 14 mile run.
– 13 –
Roch’s advice to the Highland-Bavarian Corporation was to
abandon the thought of building ont’~ and extending the Highland-
Bavarian Lodge and developing Richmond Hill and the Aspen area,
and to acquire a foothold in Ashcroft where he thoughtLa winter
and summer resort of superb quality could be built. And this
we did. Your good Judge Shaw would remember it. He wa~ in the
firm of Shaw & Garlington, and with the help of Frank Delaney from
Glenwood Springs, we acquired title to three pieces of land which
constitute the basis of the valley of Ashcroft -the old ghost town.
MADSEN: Let me just go back a second, Ted -This all happened in the
summer -or rather during 1936. You came here in the summer. Did
you have the lodge built that fall?
RYAN: We did, and I can’t for the life of me understand pow we got
it done in that time.
MADSEN: And cut a ski trail at least a trail back to the lodge there.
RYAN: Well, we cleared what is a moderate hill of aspens and what
not, and then we cut trails up. ,.to connect with the Little Annie
Basin. They were pretty rudimentary, but they were trails and we
used them. We held races on them and what not. J’ve got a
pic~ure of the finish of the first Alpine ski race held in Aspen,
and you’ll see Fred and Frank Willoughby standing at the finish
·line. The Willoughbys were a couple of Andre Roch’s star pupuls.
~ As a matter of fact, I think Frank won what we called the Senior
– 14 –
Trophy in that first race back in February 1937. And the curiosity
is that one of the star girl skiers was none other than Doris
Sheehan who is now none other than Doris Willoughby. So they had
sort of a monopoly on ski races then.
MADSEN: How did you go about building the lodge? Was this a major
undertaking?
RYAN: Well, it was considered a major undertaking in those days,
because I remember the paper quoted the story as,saying that
“more than 20 workers” were at work on it in the summer of ’36.
And of course the snows had come. They come early, as you know,
but we were still struggling to get the roof on before the Nov-
\
ember snows got too heavy. But we finished it, and we officially
opened it with a band and all the rest of it, and the raising of
the flag on, I think it was December 26, 1936.
Meanwhile, in our separate ways, Fiske, Rowan and Flynn and
myself were working away at promoting skiing in the area in California,
Colorado and New England, and I don’t know, possibly with
the help of the Benchley brochure – which these people read because
they all loved Bob Benchley – people became aware of the possibility
here. Railroad tycoons, like Judge McCarthy, head of the Denver
& Rio Grande, investment bankers, ski enthusiasts and ski
·coaches like Otto Schneibs. We had Otto Schneibs out at the lodge
in lateMarch of 1 37, and I believe the German ski team came out in
– 15 –
MADSEN:
RYAN:
April of 1 37. All these people were scouting the countryside
and were growing enthusiastic about it.
You know, I’ve always had a feeling that Averell Harriman
regretted that the town of Aspen didn’t lie on the Union Pacific,
because after the Winter Olympics of ’36 there was a definite new
interest in skiing in America, and I know that Harriman appreciated
the winter sports potential. I talked to him about it.
Well, he sent an Austrian called Felix Shaffgotts, as I recall,
west to find a land of honey for the Union Pacific Railroad. But
unfortunately the railroad ran north from Denver, and Felix, whom
Billy and I used to kid a little bit 9 never did dare come to
Aspen. He found a wonderful place in Sun Valley, and that’s how
that started.
Well now, you’re related to a Ryan back in the Laurentians,
aren’t you – Mt. Tremblant?
That’s right, George, Joe Ryan, my cousin Joe, was sort of
born and brought up in the Canadian woods. You know, he loved
chat part of the world, and he had a yen for the Laurentians and
wanted to establish a ski place up there. I did get him out to
Aspen. I got him out in the early days, rather hoping he might
come along with us. What he said was, “Ted, you’ve got the
·mountains, but I’ve got the people. I’ve got Boston, New York,
Chicago, Toronto and the rest.” He said, “The people will never
find you in Aspen.”
– 16 –
MADSEN: I imagine your cousin has had to eat his words ~everal times
since then- particularly this year.
RYAN: Well, if he were here this week, he’~ know that people have
discovered Aspen. Some people, in the early days, did find Aspen,
you know, in spite of the ardors of travel. It was a long trip,
bu\ still -the Hocheberger Ski Club groups like George Berger,
‘
Frank Ashley, Willie Hodges and a whole host of Denver ski enthusiasts
found it very early. We had lots to do With them and
they were friends of ours in Denver; and they came out (I think
the very first group was a group of this Alberg Club) as paying
guests at the lodge. Scores of others from east and west came
out and they helped the Highland-Bavarian Corporation move forward
with its plans. I mean we had good criticism and lots of
enthusiasm.
I suppose in these early endeavors we were all straight
amateurs, but we were all working to get the right thing done.
MADSEN: At the time 9 you were skiing back in the Laurentians a~ well
as in other parts of the country, weren’t you. Ted?
RYAN: Well 9 that’s part of the game 9 you see. Because you’d go up
to the Laurentians and ski with people who you hoped to bring out
into a better area.
MADSEN: Promoting all the time!
Well, sure. But as a matter of fact, I came a bit of a
cropper in that spring of 137 when I was in the Laurentians up at
– 17 –
St. Agathe. Like a nut, I was racing against a stop watch on an
icy trail in the days before steel edges -and boy, I side-swiped
a tree in the very best Austrian form – you know, bent legs, and
all that – and I just put the tree through my leg above and below
the knee, and was out of training for a while, Thank God I’d ju~t
be~n out in Aspen for two months earlier, and was in good physical
shape. Anyway, I was in the hospital for about four months then,
and in and out of it for repairs over another couple of years. But
I did get back I got back in the summertime, and hobbled myself
over one of Bill Tagert’s horses. I remember climbing up the top
of Hayden with Bill and Tom Flynn in the middle of a snowstorm in
August.
I’d been, you know, the Eastern representative. If you wanted
reservations for the Highland-Bavarian Lodge, you’d call my office
in New York. I was also dealing for the company. I remember
negotiating with American ·steel & Wire for an estimate on an a~ri~l
tramway to the top of Hayden.
MADSEN: Yes. Tell us that story.
RYAN: Well, this was the line that we thought we’d take: The
estimated cost of $1,250,000 rather staggered us perhaps, but we
were working along this idea, and T.J. Flynn, who had a wonderful
• way through political channels, was really- if I may say, in the
best sense, pitching as a lobbyist, trying to get the railroads
– 18 –
interested, and trying to get the Forestry Service interested.
He was probing these channels to help get the money to build
such a tramway.
MADSEN: Where was Billy Fiske at this time, Ted?
RYAN: Well, let’s see -Billy, of course, was actively interested …
You remember he was a member of the “Defense of London Air Squadron”
of the R.A.F. Billy and his friend, Billy Clyde and one other got
the signal three days befoTe World War II broke out that trouble
was “abrewing” and to get home to England. As a matter of fact,
the three of them got aboard the Mauritania I can’t remember the
precise date – and war was declared when they were three days out
,,
of New York. And of course, with Billy over there, he couldn’t keep
as intimate track>of this project as he wanted to. We used to communicate
…
You remember that quiet winter of 1940, wasn’t it, when nothing
seemed to be happening in the war. Billy was then in training
on Spitfires, as a matter of fact, and liking life … He was one of
the crew in August of that year of whom Churchill said of course,
“Never have so many owed so much to so few.” Billy,was one of the
fighters, and he got into trouble, and he was raked with machine
gun fire. But he managed to land his plane at his air base and
·keeled over. He was the first American killed in the R.A.F., and
you can see a plaque dedicated to him today in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
– 19 tlMADSEN:
Ted, I think this is a good breaking point. Unfortunately
we had the death of Billy Fiske, and that probably put the kibosh
on a good deal of the plans for the Ashcroft Ski Area.
Perhaps we can finish up in another session soon. May I ask
you to come back again and try to put the finishing touches on
the Ashcroft story?
RYAN: I’d love it, George. I’d love to come back. I much appreciate
your having me on the air.
MADSEN: Thank you very much.
You have been listening to Ted Ryan, one of the original
three men behind the proposed Ashcroft Ski Area, and the initial
skr’ area in this region. And that’s “Commentary” for today.
* * * * * *
– 20 –
III
MADSEN: This is the third and final in a series of programs concerning
the founding of skiing in the Aspen area, and my guest
~
is again Ted Ryan, one of three men who were the original gentlemen
behind the Ashcroft Area, and the whole Roaring Fork development
as far as skiing is concerned.
\ Ted, it is nice to have you back again.
RYAN: Thank you, George. I’m very pleased to be here.
MADSEN: I hope I’m not interrupting your skiing vacation too much
this season, but you’ve certainly given us a good deal of your
time, and we appreciate it.
Ted, at the last program we were discussing Billy Fiske, one
of your partners in the Ashcroft development. Billy was killed in
the Battle of Britain in 1940, and that left you at the helm,
didn’t it?
RYAN: That’s right, George. While Billy had headed up our little
corporation, I inherited the mantle on the Hayden project. Of
course, in the meantime, all sorts of activity had occurred here
in Aspen. Under Andre Roch’s inspiration, the Aspen Ski Club had
been founded, and the young and old in the village ‘had taken to skis
and carved out the Roch Run which Andre designed on Aspen Mountain.
And so things were going along here in the town – a national race
here, and so forth.
Frankly, after Billy was killed, I had little heart for putting
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steel into ski lifts when all the world knew that it was just a
matter of time when the U.S.A. would be getting into the war.
Yet T.J. Flynn, my old friend, the inveterate lobbyist who knew
his way through political channels, went churning away and, in
fact, he had persuaded the Colorado State Legislature to pass
what they called “an emergency measure,” mind you, on March 27,
1941, authorizing the creation of a Colorado Aerial Tramway Commission,
and providing for the sale of $650,000 worth of bonds to
defray the cost of scaling Mt. Hayden. Once plans for facilities
in Ashcroft were presented, the R.F.C., it was hoped, would buy
these bonds.
This was all on Mt. Hayden -that original development then?
Well, our conception was to build a regular little village in
the town of Ashcroft, and to run a cable car to Hayden to ~pen up
the country for winter and for summer.
I’d like to interrupt you here, just to go back, possibly siY
years, to 1936 again. You mentioned the founding of the Aspen Ski
Club which was one of Andre Roch’s ventures in Aspen. I also
understand that you had originally suggested the idea, .or were one
of the ones who had planted it in his fertile brain anyway.
Well, I don’t know whether I suggested it really, but of
• course it was all to everyone’s good to develop good will and all
the rest amongst the townsfolk of Aspen, and we wanted Andre to
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teach them how to ski, get them interested in things, and so
forth, and we encouraged him to do so. He was a great personality,
and today is well remembered and much beloved by many of
our friends here in town.
MADSEN: I notice you have a copy of the Aspen Times in front of you. ,
It says: “Published every Thursday morning” and this is November 26,
1936.”
RYAN: Yes, George, this is one of my prized possessions. This is a
four-column headline that says, “Winter Resort Plans are Revealed
Aspen May Become Leading Snow Sport City in the Entire U.S.A.”
MADSEN: Prophetic.
RYAN: It was prophetic, and I’ll tell you what. One of the·curiosities
here is that you can note that the good old Aspen Times
says, “This issue is being read by 450 families .u Today, I suppose,
it’s read by 10,000 people.
MADSEN: Yes. You could multiply it out to 10,000 people easily, Ted.
RYAN: This is one for my memory book.
MADSEN: Well, now back to the Hayden project. I’m sorry to have
interrupted you. This bill for $650,000 -was this passed by the
Colorado Legislature?
RYAN: Yes, it was passed, and the Commission was created. Then what
we had to do, of course, was to prove to the Commission that we had
actual plans for the village and for accommodations, and so forth,
and that we could go on with it as a profitable enterprise before
the R.F.C. would think of buying the bonds. And I remember that
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the summer of ’41 I had Ellery Husted, a very well-known architect
from New York, come out and study the valley from top to bottom.
He reported on power, water, telephone, and soil conditions, fuel
and climate, building conditions, and all the rest. He came back
extremely keen about this, and even as late as September 3, 1941,
three months before Pearl Harbor, he wrote that he was extremely
keen about the thing. He said, “I don’t wish to give unsolicited
advice, but it seems to me that the restoration of the old mining
town and development of the whole project along those lines which
would be indigenous to the country and interesting to all Americans,
might have more possibilities for publicity than a Bavarian or a
Swiss Village.” A kind of Williamsburg of the Old West is what he
wanted to build. And he says? “There’s a jail that held Jesse
James, a barroom with gun shots, a fancy house and the home of old
Tabor, as well as a lot of other buildings. This,” said Husted,
“is something that money can’t buy, and all there already.”
But, as you see, this was September ’41. Then war came ….
Pearl Harbor came.
And where do we go from here? I know that the army was over
at Camp Hale, and some of the boys did some skiing over here, but
was there any other connection with Aspen then?
Well, the first thing I did, as head of the company, was to go
straight to Washington and offer our land and situation in A~hcroft
to ~he U.S. Army Ski Tro6ps for a dollar for the duration.
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That’s a little-known story.
Well, it’s a fact. But I was told, of course, that because
Aspen wasn’t on a main railway, it wouldn’t be practical – the
logistics of it they just couldn’t set up the main camp here,
so they went to Camp Hale, as you know. But they did come over
with mountain mule artillery, and they camped up in Ashcroft, and
there’s still evidence of their encampment that you can see when
the snows go.
Is that right?
Oh yes. So I think that was the first connection with the
lOth Mountain Division. They had this for a dollar for the duration.
Ted, did you go off to service then yourself?
Well, with that old leg I told you about, I couldn’t get into
a uniform, but I did happen on a very absorbing war of my own. I
joined up as a civilian i~ Bill Donovan’s O.S.S., and I got into a
lot of interesting stuff, I think climaxed really by very intense
activity in helping to effectuate the early surrender of the German
armies in Italy. You remember they threw in the sponge maybe ten
days before the final surrender.
As a matter of fact, the lOth Mountain Division was over in
• Italy, wasn’t it?
It was, and I like to think that that surrender at least saved
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them a few casualties. I had a lot of friends in the lOth Mountain.
I can imagine it did. Well then, what happened after the war,
Ted?
Well, to tell you the truth, when I got back from the war~, I
spent some time adjusting to farm and fatherhood, and so forth, in
Sharon.
This is back in Connecticut?
That’s right, and quite frankly, I didn’t have any immediate
burning desire to build a ski resort. I was trying to reorient
myself a bit with my horne. And before I knew it, Friedl Pfeiffer,
Johnny Litchfield and Percy Rideout had teamed tip with Walter
Paepke, and Aspen Mountain was off and running.
Were you a factor in the Aspen Skiing Corp., Paepke’s development?
Not in the very beginning of it. Frankly, I may have thought
that they were building the ski resort in the wrong area. But anything
they did was all to the good for skiing in America, and Pitkin
County in particular~ so I myself did invest in the Aspen Company
and the Aspen Skiing Corp., and I’m very proud of what they’ve
accomplished.
How about the cultural aspect of that? I know that wasn’t in
your original plans of it in Ashcroft.
We hadn’t reached that, and this is one thing I am forever indebted
to Walter Paepke for. I think the fact that be brought in
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the cultural, the summer interests, as he did, was a great boon
to the town.
And as far as the Aspen Skiing Corp. was concerned, I.would
imagine you were quite a promoter of that development.
Of course I was enthusiastic about it. I remember I came out
here with Walter Paepke in the autumn of ’46 and was up on the
top at the roundhouse before it was completed, with John Jay and
Rideout and a few others, and Walter, and I went home armed with
movies about the whole area, which I showed at Hotchkiss School
and all these schools around New England, trying to drum up trade
for Aspen. You bet I was keen about it.
In fact, in the winter of 147 we reopened the Lodge which
had lain sort of dormant all through the war, and we brought our
two young children out here and spent the whole winter here.
This is the Highland-Bavarian …
That’s right, and we lived there as a home. I can get a vivid
picture of Johnny Litchfield teaching my son – then five – his
original kick turn, and later encouraging him to make down hill runs
on the little slopes we had out near the lodge.
MADSEN: I’ve heard a rumor, Ted, that there was actually some sort of
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tie-in between the Paepke family and the Ryans. Am I off base there,
or have they discolored that?
I wouldn’t call it a tie-in between the Paepkes and the Ryans
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eHactly. I didn’t actually meet Walter Paepke until 1 46 – and I
found him a warm friend ever after. But one of the curiosities of
the way things tie in is this: Pussie Paepke told me not too long
ago that, I think in the winter of ’38, she came to Aspen with a
Denver group – maybe some of the original Denver group that I told
you came out to the Lodge – and she climbed back up over Richmond
Hill and skied down to Aspen, as we all used to do. So I think
that was her first view of Aspen. {She was still Pussie Nitze at
the time)* And her brother, Paul Nitze, by another curiosity, I
believe was employed by the same investment firm of Dillon Reed
where Billy Fiske was working in his most enthusiastic days of
promoting Aspen.
Certainly you told us about that.
These are sort of coincidental. I think it’s marvelous that
these people tie in with the lOth Mountain Division and all the
rest to the remarkable development that’s here.
Do you consider yourself an old-timer of the area now, Ted?
Well, I don’t like to bring out my age! I don’t feel very
old but I’m happy to be called an “old-timer” here.’
Ted, I’m sorry to interrupt, but unfortunately our tape recorder
is running out of tape, and we’ll have to end this interview
right now.
It’s certainly been a pleasure to have you on the programyou,
Ted, Ryan, being one of the first who introduced Alpine skiing
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in the Aspen area. And thank you very much for being on
“Commentary” today, Ted Ryan