Fun Valley Ski Area
Montezuma, Iowac.1970-2007
Order Fun Valley Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. In January 1973 an Associated Press roundup called its 2,600-foot run the longest ski slope in Iowa. Edwin Bryan, known as Easy Ed, was still running the family hill in 1986 and liked to call it the Iowa Alps. Browse the styles below, and the full Fun Valley history is further down. Every shirt is printed to order in the USA and carries the memories of bygone places and teams.
5 products
Fun Valley Ski Area History
Fun Valley Ski Area near Montezuma, Iowa, was a family ski hill in Poweshiek County, two and a half miles west of Highway 63 and about eight miles south of Interstate 80, close to Lake Ponderosa. Edwin and Kay Bryan opened it around 1970 with a rope tow; sources split between 1969 and 1970. A state list of Iowa ski areas from September 1972 named Edwin Bryan as the contact and described three rope lifts, five slopes from 100 to 2,600 feet long, lights for night skiing, ski instructors and 150 acres of snowmobile trails, with sleds, skates and snowmobiles for rent. In January 1973 an Associated Press roundup called the 2,600-foot run at Fun Valley the longest ski slope in Iowa.
The hill kept growing through the 1970s. A 1978 Des Moines Register guide listed five slopes, six rope lifts and a cable handle tow, eight snowmaking machines, a ski patrol, a restaurant, a clothing store and a sledding area. The trail map that winter gave a vertical drop of 240 feet and named the runs: Fanny Run, Freeway Run, Steep Run, Tornado Run and Road Run, plus a new Stadeli handle tow. In January 1986 the Cedar Rapids Gazette found Edwin "Easy Ed" Bryan, a 65-year-old former farmer, still running the family hill, and he said, "We call 'em the Iowa Alps just for kicks." By 1987 the brochure showed a triple chair, a double chair, a pony lift and a lift called the Statelite, and by 1989 the map added trail names such as Twister Valley, Tally Ho, Nature's Folly and Explorer's Delight.
Rick and Connie Bryan, the next generation of the family, took over in 1992. A KCCI television crew filmed the slopes in 1991, and one skier told them it was not Colorado but it would do. In the 2000s the area ran three chairlifts, which it named Triple Delight, Double Trouble and Double Up, along with a tubing park with its own surface lift and a half pipe. The last trail map dates from 2007, and the area is not recorded as operating after that; no source gives a reason for the closing. The site later held a motocross track under the Fun Valley name, since closed.