Before Your Time is a podcast about Vermont history. Every episode, we go inside the stacks at the Vermont Historical Society to look at an object from their permanent collection that tells us something unique about our state. Then, we take a closer look at the people, the events, and the ideas that surround each artifact.
[I]f you ride up Mount Mansfield today, you’ll probably take a “quad,” a sturdy chairlift that holds four people. Or maybe you’ll pack eight companions into a fully enclosed gondola. But the revolutionary design that helped the ski resort industry take off was comparably modest: It held just one rider at a time.
The original single chair from Mount Mansfield was once the longest, highest chairlift in the eastern U.S. By today’s standards, it was woefully inefficient. But compared to climbing a mountain on foot or being dragged up with a rope tow, the single chair lift changed the sport as we know it.
The sport, in turn, changed Vermont.
Skiing made the state a four-season destination. On this podcast, hear about how it defined a certain era of our history, around the mid-20th century, when Vermont transformed the way it sold itself to outsiders, and altered its landscape to fit.
Brian Lindner and Thelma Osgood recount the heyday of the 10th Mountain Division, a World War II Army unit that helped shape the early ski industry. Tom Slayton discusses his tenure at the helm of Vermont Life, the state-run promotional magazine that brought vibrant images of Green Mountain culture to the rest of the country. And Amanda Gustin chronicles the property battles that accompanied the arrival of the interstates.
Subscribe to Before Your Time on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play. See more images and a transcript of this episode at beforeyourtime.org.
Produced in partnership with the Vermont Historical Society and the Vermont Humanities Council. Music for this episode is by Michael Chapman and the Woodpiles, Blue Dot Sessions, and Uuriter.