ASPEN/SNOWMASS HISTORY

Welcome to Aspen/Snowmass! Four epic mountains offering a combined 5,285 acres of terrain, five terrain parks with three halfpipes and two superpipes, and 392 trails served by 46 lifts.

Aspen/Snowmass has a history that few North American resorts can rival. Aspen was one of the first towns in North America to run on electricity, and the Hotel Jerome had one of the first elevators west of the Mississippi. At the J Bar, you can still order a beer from the same barstool where miners, ranchers and world champion ski racers have sat over the last hundred years. When the first chairlifts were built on Aspen Mountain in 1946, they were the longest and covered the most vertical of any lift system in the world. North America’s first FIS World Ski Championships were held in Aspen in 1950.

From the silver boom days of the 1890s, when Aspen’s population swelled to 12,000 people, through the quiet years of the early 1900s when only 700 people lived here, to its rebirth as a ski town in the 1940s, Aspen has built upon its history and maintained a sense of community and character that enriches the Aspen/Snowmass experience. The tumultuous 50s, 60s and 70s saw a parade of characters roll into town to ski for a season, and then stay to lead the town into the future.

From events to nightlife-Aspen is unrelenting, unreserved and can be summed up in one word: F-U-N!  With more activities, restaurants, bars and nightclubs than you could ever visit in a single vacation, know before you visit that your afternoons and evenings will be as action-packed as your days on the slopes.