Stratton Mountain Resort

The Stratton Corporation was established on July 5, 1960, with Frank Snyder (a former president of Moore and Munger) as president, Robert Wright as VP of ski operations, Herbert "Tink" Smith as chairman and treasurer, Elmer Argast as the first general manager, and A. Luke Crispe as secretary, per New England Ski History's Stratton Mountain history page. Stratton Mountain Resort opened on December 23, 1961, with chairlift service and an Alexander McIlvane-designed base lodge; a further double chairlift, serving the upper mountain, opened a few days later. Stratton's original 1961 lift towers were installed by helicopter, using Petroleum Helicopters of Louisiana, to save weeks of ground-based labor. In late 1979 Stratton purchased the nearby Bromley ski area, assuming Bromley's multimillion-dollar debt. Moore and Munger, Inc. purchased Stratton in early 1980, then sold the Bromley ski area to the Magic Mountain ownership group in fall 1987 while retaining Stratton. Victoria USA, Inc., a Japanese sporting-goods company that also owned Breckenridge, purchased Stratton from Moore and Munger in spring 1989. Intrawest purchased Stratton from Victoria USA, Inc. in 1994. Alterra Mountain Company was created when affiliates of KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown and Company acquired Intrawest (Stratton's owner), Mammoth Resorts, and Deer Valley Resort in 2017; the new company was publicly announced on January 11, 2018, with Stratton named among its founding twelve destinations. On February 10, 1974, 20-year-old James Sunday was paralyzed in a skiing accident at Stratton; on June 9, 1977, a Vermont jury awarded him $1.5 million in a landmark decision that led to significant price increases in liability insurance across the ski industry. In 1977, International Paper Company donated land on Stratton Mountain to the United States Ski Educational Foundation to benefit the United States Ski Team. Stratton hosted FIS Alpine Ski World Cup technical events in early March 1978; Phil Mahre won the men's giant slalom and Steve Mahre won the slalom, per contemporaneous wire coverage cited in Wikipedia's Stratton Mountain Resort article. Stratton Mountain Resort was the first ski resort to allow snowboarding, per Holly Thorpe's "Snowboarding: The Ultimate Guide," as cited in Wikipedia's "Stratton, Vermont" article. During the 1980s, under Moore and Munger ownership, Stratton became home to the first snowboard school, and later to the first halfpipe and formal terrain park on the U.S. East Coast. Stratton began hosting US Open snowboard races in 1985, and hosted the Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships every year from 1985 through 2012 before the event relocated to Vail, Colorado starting in 2013. Jake Burton Carpenter, who had competed at snurfing events since the 1970s, founded Burton Snowboards in Londonderry, Vermont in 1977; Stratton, also within Windham County, became the ally resort where he found early institutional acceptance for snowboarding. Olympic snowboarders Lindsey Jacobellis, Ross Powers, and Louis Vito are listed as notable people associated with the town of Stratton, Vermont. Stratton Mountain School, founded in 1972, has produced numerous Olympians, including Ross Powers and Lindsey Jacobellis, according to Wikipedia's "Stratton Mountain School" article. Daniel Webster spoke to 10,000 Whigs on Stratton Mountain in 1840, per the Vermont Historical Society, as cited in Wikipedia's "Stratton, Vermont" article. Stratton was one of thirteen Vermont towns isolated by flooding caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011, per The New York Times' August 31, 2011 report. A new high-speed quad chairlift for the Snow Bowl area debuted in January 2019.