Officials from Vail Resorts and the U.S. Forest Service dig up some wet dirt Thursday morning at the top of the new McCoy Park area at Beaver Creek. From left are Bill Kennedy, Carl Orlowski, Kyle Griffith, Gary Shimanowitz, Nadia Guerriero, Leanne Veldhuis, Carl Eaton, Dan Ramker and Addy McCord. Guerriero, Beaver Creek’s chief operating officer, got to hold on to her gold shovel as a keepsake.
Vail Resorts/Special to the Daily
Beaver Creek and U.S. Forest Service officials broke ground Thursday on the ski area’s new McCoy Park project, a 250-acre expansion of lift-served terrain that will include two new quads and 17 new trails.
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.”