FRANCONIA, NH.  A new exhibit opening on June 2, 2006 at the New England Ski Museum will focus on northeastern organizations and people who spread aspects of alpine skiing across the United States and the story of their nationwide influence on the sport of skiing.

The spread of skiing from the old world to the new is a case study in geographic dispersion of a new cultural inclination along contemporary transportation routes and communication channels. As skiing, particularly the alpine form that is the basis of much of today’s sport and business, arrived in the U.S., it was most evident in the northeastern part of the nation, clustered around the transportation hubs of New York and Boston, and within striking distance of hills and mountains in a snowy climate. In the period between the world wars, the northeastern region was the center of Alpine skiing in the U.S. The contributions of northeasterners laid the foundations for an industry that spread across the country, and for a pastime that became for many, in the much-quoted phrase of one of its earliest missionaries, Otto Schniebs, a way of life.

The exhibit details the parts played by such groups as the Lake Placid Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Dartmouth Outing Club and the Amateur Ski Club of New York. All were important in raising the profile of skiing in the first three decades of the 20th century. The Lake Placid Club provided some of the earliest ski instruction to its members and guests, then arranged for the 1932 Winter Olympic Games to be held in the U.S. for the first time. The DOC introduced many to skiing, sending forth a steady stream of young careerists who had caught the lifelong skiing bug. Out of the AMC came the first ski periodical and the concept of snow trains, which brought skiing within the reach of the middle class in the Depression.

ASCNY members such as Roland Palmedo, Minot C. Dole and Lowell Thomas had a tremendous national effect, most notably in Dole’s nurturing of the National Ski Patrol System in the late 1930s, and the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division in World War II. Palmedo was present at so many critical points of skiing’s growth that it is hard to define his role; he was an early explorer for downhill ski terrain, editor of the first fine skiing book, ski lift investor and ski area founder, and advocate of cross-country skiing and international air travel. Lowell Thomas, the well-known radio broadcaster, took every opportunity to promote the sport to his nationwide audience, routinely airing his shows from ski resorts around the country.

The US Eastern Amateur Ski Association became a division of the National Ski Association, the national authority governing skiing, and expanded their horizon toward the intensifying alpine skiing disciplines of downhill and slalom. The periodicals of Eastern, as it was called, became a unifying influence among skiers nationwide.

American Steel & Wire Company built most of the earliest chairlifts in the country. The company had accumulated a large body of tramway-building expertise through its experience constructing mining tramways, and its chief tramway engineer Gordon Bannerman supervised many of the early chairlift installations. It was the failure of one of the company’s lifts almost 20 years after construction that led to the founding of the New Hampshire Tramway Safety Board, which wrote a code governing lift operation and maintenance that became a model for many other states with ski lifts.

After World War II, the center of gravity of the sport of skiing shifted gradually westward, helped along by better transportation and exposure of many skiers to the better snow conditions found in the west. Eastern technical innovations continued to be important though, such as the invention of snowmaking in Connecticut, and the development and refinement of slope grooming in New Hampshire and Maine. And while snowboarding was never exclusive to the east, the movement partially started by Jake Carpenter, builder of Burton snowboards, helped many small and mid-sized ski areas avoid the fate of those places now known as “lost ski areas” that succumbed to growing costs and dwindling numbers in the 1970s and 1980s.

The exhibit will be on display from June 2, 2006 until the end of the 2007 ski season.

Located in Franconia Notch next to the Cannon Mountain Tramway, NH, the New England Ski Museum is a non-profit, member-supported museum dedicated to collecting, preserving and exhibiting aspects of ski history.  The Museum is open from 10 AM to 5 PM seven days a week from Memorial Day through the end of March. Admission is always free. For more information call 800-639-4181 or visit www.skimuseum.org.