Opening ceremonies for Beaver Creek were held on Dec. 15, 1980. From left to right: Brain Rapp, president of Beaver Creek Resort Company; Harry Bass, chairman of Vail Associates; unidentified Forest Service representative; Jack Marshall, president of Vail Associates; then-governor Dick Lamm; former U.S. president Gerald Ford. (Vail Resorts
Special to the Daily)
Editor’s Note: The Vail Daily’s Tricia Swenson has compiled this information from talks with longtime locals, her own experience as a Beaver Creek Children’s Ski and Snowboard School instructor and from books from the Avon Public Library.
The first known inhabitants of the Beaver Creek Valley were primarily the Utes as well as hunting parties from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. The Utes were called “Blue Sky People” by other tribes. They called the peaks that surrounded them “The Shining Mountains.”