As skiing became popular nationally, a group of people in Sandpoint developed a run on the Pine Street hill just west of town. A gasoline engine operated a rope tow during the 1950s, carrying two adults or three kids at a time. Since the hill was low in elevation, however, it sometimes lacked an important ingredient of skiing — snow.
While the fun of skiing was certainly on their minds, the men who planned the development of Schweitzer Mountain ski area had a more pragmatic goal — the creation of winter jobs in an area that was economically depressed during the 1960s.
