Marble Ski Area

Marble Ski Area in Marble, Colorado, was laid out on the slopes of Mount Daly just east of town, in the Crystal River valley of Gunnison County. Marble is named for the white stone quarried above it, the stone of the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Ranchers had looked at a ski hill there as early as 1957, and in 1970 a Denver development group formed Marble Ski Area, Inc. That year it took about a thousand skiers and prospective lot buyers up the mountain by snowcat.

Work on a Riblet double chairlift began in June 1971. The lift ran about 4,300 feet up the main run, with a vertical drop of roughly 1,050 feet to a top station near 9,800 feet, and it carried skiers during the 1971-72 season. Some accounts say it ran a second winter. The plans on paper were far larger: a $50 million resort with a dozen lifts, two gondolas, a village with lodges, shops and a convention center, a golf course, and room for 20,000 people.

Very little went right. The slopes faced south and west instead of north. The Forest Service turned down a 4,600-acre permit in 1971 and then ordered an environmental study on a smaller 624-acre area. Residents formed the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association in 1972, a state geologist's report warned of mudslides, erosion and flooding, and in May 1973 a mudflow buried the access road and ran into Beaver Lake. That July the Colorado Land Use Commission declared the development a public hazard. The town of Marble refused to join a water and sewer district the resort needed, and the bond deal for those improvements fell through.

The company gave up its real estate license in July 1974 and filed a bankruptcy plan in January 1975. The double chair still stands on Mount Daly, along with the bottom terminal, a warming hut that became a cabin, and the shell of a hotel that was never finished. The land is private.