On New Year's Day, 1948, the Boyne Mountain Ski Club opened with two ungroomed slopes, still bumpy from the stumps of trees that had been removed. It was a sizable improvement over existing devices such as tow ropes and "J-bars," and its status as the first ski lift in the Midwest immediately put Kircher's operation on the map. The lift, which could transport 400 skiers per hour, had originally been built in 1936, and in fact was the very first chairlift ever constructed. Gottshalk alerted Kircher to the fact that Sun Valley was willing to sell one of its single-chair ski lifts, and he bought it with $2,000 of his own money, his partners having by now gotten cold feet. He soon began clearing trees to create two ski trails, which had been laid out by Victor Gottshalk, a German ski instructor he had worked with at Sun Valley. The seller was so incredulous that Kircher wanted to use the undeveloped, remote site for skiing, that he sold it to him for a dollar.Īfter buying the land Kircher left the auto dealership and moved his young family north. After looking at ten possible sites, in 1947 they bought 40 acres of land in the northwest corner of Michigan's lower peninsula, on which an 1,150-foot mountain stood.
Frustrated by the lack of skiing options in Michigan, which then had just one private and one public ski hill, in the mid-1940s he and two partners put up $5,000 each to create a ski area of their own. He received his first set of skis at nine, and later took ski trips to Lake Placid, New York, and Sun Valley, Idaho, where he became an accomplished downhill skier.Īfter briefly attending the University of Michigan, Kircher began working at his family's Studebaker car dealership in the Detroit suburb of Rochester. Louis, Kircher had moved as an infant with his family to Detroit. The company is owned and run by the family of founder Everett Kircher.īoyne USA Resorts traces its roots to the year 1947, and a Michigan skiing fan named Everett Kircher. Boyne also operates a Michigan-based chain of ski and golf shops, a sightseeing chairlift in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and a golf course in Naples, Florida. The firm's properties include Big Sky Resort in Montana, Crystal Mountain in Washington State, Brighton Ski Bowl in Utah, Cypress Mountain in British Columbia, and Boyne Mountain, Boyne Highlands, and the Inn at Bay Harbor in Michigan. Boyne USA Resorts is one of the leading operators of ski and golf resorts in North America.
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