Geneva Basin Ski Area
Grant, Colorado1963-1984
Shop Geneva Basin Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The collection has two designs, a rainbow and the cartoon St. Bernard with a blue keg marked GB from the early 1970s trail map. In 1984 an empty chair fell from the Duck Creek lift, the state shut the area down, and the owners could not pay for the repair. Pick a style below, then read the full Geneva Basin history further down. We are an American small business bringing back the signs and logos of places and teams that are long gone but remembered fondly.
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Geneva Basin Ski Area History
Geneva Basin Ski Area near Grant, Colorado, sat at the head of a basin just south of Guanella Pass in the Pike National Forest, with a summit near 11,750 feet and a base near 10,500, for a vertical drop of 1,250 feet. It opened under another name, built by a family from Illinois that ran a ski area in Michigan. Sources disagree on the opening: Colorado Ski History and several others say 1963, while Wikipedia gives December 1961. Early on it ran a double chair called Duck Creek and a T-bar.
The first operators had money trouble from the start, and the access road was unpaved. The area went into foreclosure and was sold at auction, with the buyers named as the Burke family and Roy Romer, later Colorado's governor. They renamed it Geneva Basin. Colorado Ski History puts the sale in 1965. The Burkes sold to an investment group from Kansas in 1972, and in 1974 a new double chair replaced the T-bar. Two platter lifts served the beginner area and the bowl. The area claimed about 300 inches of snow a year and later added snowmaking on part of the hill.
Its trail map from the early 1970s carried a cartoon St. Bernard with a blue keg marked GB, and later brochures switched to plain lowercase lettering on a navy cover over yellow, blue and red stripes. Geneva Basin sold lift tickets to Front Range day skiers, with Denver about an hour away. A 1983 guide listed adult tickets at 10 to 13 dollars.
The owners changed several times, and maintenance slipped. In 1984 an empty chair fell from the Duck Creek lift cable, and the Colorado Tramway Board shut the area down until the lift was repaired. The owners could not pay for it, and the area never reopened. Only 24,490 skier visits were counted in that last season. A 1985 group began a new triple chair, the Phoenix lift, but went bankrupt, and creditors stripped the site. Park County voters turned down a recreation tax to reopen it in November 1993, and the Forest Service burned the base lodge days later. The lifts are gone. Backcountry skiers now climb the old runs, and a ski patrol hut at the top of the old Duck Creek lift is the one building left.