Snowmass Village, Colorado | |
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Coordinates: 39°14′45″N106°56′12″W / 39.24583°N 106.93667°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Colorado |
County [1] | Pitkin County |
Settled | About 1910 |
Incorporated | 1977 [2] |
Government | |
• Type | Home rule municipality [1] |
Area | |
• Total | 27.86 sq mi (72.17 km2) |
• Land | 27.78 sq mi (71.95 km2) |
• Water | 0.08 sq mi (0.21 km2) |
Elevation | 8,309 ft (2,533 m) |
Population | |
• Total | 3,096 |
• Density | 110/sq mi (43/km2) |
Time zone | UTC-7 (Mountain (MST)) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC-6 (MDT) |
ZIP code [6] | 81615 (PO Box) |
Area code | 970 |
FIPS code | 08-71755 |
GNIS feature ID | 2413302 [4] |
Website | www.tosv.com |
Snowmass Village is a home rule municipality in Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The population was 3,096 at the 2020 census. [5] A popular winter resort location for skiing and snowboarding, the town is well known as the location of the Snowmass ski area, the largest of the four nearby ski areas operated collectively as Aspen/Snowmass. In 2010, the accidental discovery by a bulldozer operator of fossilized elements of a Pleistocene ecosystem in the ice age lake bed at the Ziegler Reservoir (commonly referred to as the Snowmastodon site) put Snowmass Village prominently on the paleontological map of North America. [7]
The Brush Creek Valley was settled circa 1910 by ranching families including: Sinclair, Melton, Stapleton, and Hoaglund. [8] As a child, Hilder Hoaglund would ride her horse into Aspen to go to school. Her father, Charles Hoaglund, immigrated from Sweden in the 1800s. After a school was built in Brush Creek valley, she attended the Brush Creek Frontier School, now called the Little Red Schoolhouse, located on Owl Creek Road. She became a teacher at that school and then at the Red Brick School in Aspen. At the schoolhouse, she played the accordion or piano for community dances. When she married Bill Anderson, the Hoaglund Ranch became the Anderson Ranch.
Paul Soldner, a ceramic artist noted for developing American Raku, established a studio in the Anderson Ranch buildings in 1966. He founded the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and incorporated it into a non-profit in 1973. [9] The Anderson Ranch Arts Center on Owl Creek Road uses many of the original buildings from the Hoaglund Ranch, although not in their original location, farther down stream on what is now Snowmass Club Circle.
Under the leadership of Bill Janss and DRC Brown, the American Cement Company developed Snowmass Village as a ski resort starting in 1966. * [10] Hayfields were subdivided and the lots sold for houses. Brush Creek is an unappealing name for a ski area, so they named the resort Snowmass after the valley to the west of Brush Creek. Fritz Benidict acted as the architect of the Snowmass ski area. The Campground Chairlift serving the western edge of the ski area, actually does extend into the Snowmass Valley. Five chairlifts were installed: Fanny Hill, Burlingame, and Sam's Knob, the Big Burn, and Campground.
The Snowmass ski area first opened on December 16, 1967. The new ski area hired Olympic medalist Stein Eriksen to direct the ski school. Besides experience as a skier and instructor, Stein Eriksen brought an aura of European glamor to the raw new resort. [11]
Brush Creek Road was paved in 1968. The former hayfields still had mostly alfalfa into the 1970s. The Snowmass Golf Course was first laid out with nine holes in (need date). It was expanded and redesigned several times (need dates), the latest in 2001 by James Engh. The periodic re-landscaping of the golf course led to the relocation of ranch houses and to changes in the valley floor from flat or sloping fields to rolling hills with ponds.
The Snowmass Wildcat Fire Protection District was founded in 1971 and the firehouse built on Owl Creek Road.
Notorious serial killer Ted Bundy abducted and murdered Caryn Campbell in Snowmass Village on January 12, 1975. Her body was later found along the Owl Creek road near what is now the Facilities Maintenance Division.
In 1977, the community incorporated as the Town of Snowmass Village.
The Snowmass Chapel was built near the firehouse on Owl Creek Road in 1988. Previous to this time, church services were held in the Opticon Movie Theater or in the open air Aspen Grove Chapel, where benches were set up under aspen trees separating two ski runs. Later the area was cleared for more condominiums off Wood Road.
Today, Snowmass Village has experienced a building boom, as new condominiums, luxury homes, mountainside mansions, and Base Village have recently been constructed. Westin Hotels and the Viceroy Hotel Group have recently built a respective hotel in Snowmass. Snowmass Village is also experiencing a rising influx of wealthy tourists and skiers.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 25.6 square miles (66 km2), of which 25.5 square miles (66 km2) is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26 km2) (0.35%) is water.
Snowmass Village is to the north and at the base of the Snowmass Ski Area. It is located on Brush Creek, not Snowmass Creek. Within the area of the town, Owl Creek and Brush Creek join and then flow north into the Roaring Fork River. Visible from the village from east to west are Burnt Mountain Ridge, Burnt Mountain, Baldy Mountain, Chapel Peak, Garret Peak, Clark Peak, Mount Daly, and Capitol Peak. Neither Snowmass Mountain nor Snowmass Peak, at the headwaters of Snowmass Creek, are visible from Snowmass Village.
The geologic unit Mancos Shale underlies most of the area. On slopes too steep for vegetation, this shale is visible as gray expanses of eroding bedrock. On south-facing slopes, the alkaline soil that develops from the shales supports Gambel oak, sagebrush, serviceberry, and chokecherry. The north-facing slopes feature aspen, subalpine fir, Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, and blue spruce.
The area around Snowmass Village has abundant wildlife including black bears which feed on the acorns and berries of the south-facing slopes.
Census | Pop. | Note | %± |
---|---|---|---|
1980 | 999 | — | |
1990 | 1,449 | 45.0% | |
2000 | 1,822 | 25.7% | |
2010 | 2,826 | 55.1% | |
2020 | 3,096 | 9.6% | |
U.S. Decennial Census |
Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains' Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level on the Western Slope, 11 miles (18 km) west of the Continental Divide. Aspen is now a part of the Glenwood Springs, CO Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Vail is a home rule municipality in Eagle County, Colorado, United States. The population of the town was 4,835 in 2020. Home to Vail Ski Resort, the largest ski mountain in Colorado, the town is known for its hotels, dining, and for the numerous events the city hosts annually, such as the Vail Film Festival, Vail Resorts Snow Days, and Bravo! Vail.
A detachable chairlift or high-speed chairlift is a type of passenger aerial lift, which, like a fixed-grip chairlift, consists of numerous chairs attached to a constantly moving wire rope that is strung between two terminals over intermediate towers. They are now commonplace at all but the smallest of ski resorts. Some are installed at tourist attractions as well as for urban transportation.
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Snowmass is an unincorporated community and a U.S. Post Office located in Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. It is situated in the valley of the Roaring Fork River, near the mouth of Snowmass Creek along State Highway 82 between Aspen and Basalt. It consists largely of a post office, several commercial businesses, and surrounding houses and ranches. The Snowmass Post Office has the ZIP Code 81654.
The Elk Mountains are a high, rugged mountain range in the Rocky Mountains of west-central Colorado in the United States. The mountains sit on the western side of the Continental Divide, largely in southern Pitkin and northern Gunnison counties, in the area southwest of Aspen, south of the Roaring Fork River valley, and east of the Crystal River. The range sits west of the Sawatch Range and northeast of the West Elk Mountains. Much of the range is located within the White River National Forest and the Gunnison National Forest, as well as the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness and Raggeds Wilderness. The Elk Mountains rise nearly 9,000 ft. above the Roaring Fork Valley to the north.
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Snowmass may refer to:
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