ALEXANDER CUSHING
Wayne Poulsen had a dream, but he just did not have the money. Alexander Cushing took Wayne Poulsen's dream and turned it into reality, eventually developing what is called today, Palisades Tahoe.
Upon seeing Squaw Valley during a 1946 ski vacation, Cushing realized its potential to become a great mountain resort and went into partnership with Poulsen to develop it, investing $145,000 of his own money and bringing $275,000 from Laurence Rockefeller and other investors to found the Squaw Valley Ski Corporation in 1949. Soon afterward, his relationship with Poulsen soured. He then led the company without Poulsen's involvement.
The resort began with one chair lift (proclaimed the longest double chair lift on Earth), two rope tows and a 50-room lodge. It remained as such until, after reading a newspaper account on the race to host the VIIIth Olympic Winter Games, Cushing submitted a proposal in 1954, to hold a new type of winter games with an athlete's village and temporary facilities - to keep costs low.
It was a publicity stunt on Cushing's part. He never imagined he'd actually win the games, but the novel idea struck a chord with the International Olympic Committee, and they awarded the games to California over Innsbruck, Austria and St. Moritz, Switzerland. It was the first Olympics to be televised live, bringing national attention to U.S. skiing and making Cushing the first and only ski area operator to appear on the cover of TIME.
The 1960 Olympic Winter Games transformed California skiing instantly. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was building interstate superhighways, and it became imperative that I-80 be completed in time for the '60 games.
California's Winter Olympics introduced the idea that skiing in the High Sierra was an easy drive away for generations of Californians who head to the Sierra Nevada on winter weekends. Skiing became part of the California lifestyle because of what Cushing did.
Following the Olympics, Cushing set about building Squaw bigger and better than any other ski area had ever attempted, always striving to have the most and largest lifts: the longest chair, the first gondola, the largest tram, the only funitel.
Today, Palisades Tahoe (which combined Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows) has 42 lifts, covers 6,000 skiable acres and attracts some 600,000 skiers. It is the largest mountain resort, by any measure, in California. Cushing was inducted to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1999.
