Hello my friends. Bogus Basin is getting things goin' for its 81st season, so I thought it would be fun to take a look back at how our local mountain got its start (& its name). This story was written by Sharon Fisher. You can listen to me read it on today's podcast episode. Also, tomorrow is the final day of our pre-Christmas flash sale! Here's the details:

• Sale ends Wed, Dec 20 at 11:59pm
• Use promo code MERRY at checkout
• Buy one, get one 50% off on sweatshirts & shirts
• $2 off enamel pins
• $1 stickers (stocking stuffers!)
• Surprise with EVERY purchase

SHOP THE SALE!

The history of Bogus Basin

By Sharon Fisher

Bogus Basin was founded in 1942 & it’s been downhill ever since.

You may be surprised at how recently skiing became a thing in the United States. The first U.S. ski club wasn’t formed until the late 1880s at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and what’s considered to be the first “destination” ski area in the U.S. was actually Idaho’s Sun Valley, in 1936.

But of course, the most beloved ski resort in Boise is Bogus Basin.

“Bogus Basin is the largest of just a handful of nonprofit ski areas in the country,” said Susan Saad, director of community and customer relations. “With 2,600 skiable acres and more than 500,000 skier visits, we are not just a little hometown ski hill. Our nonprofit status is our superpower.”

Founding Bogus

The expert on Bogus Basin’s history is Eve Brassey Chandler, author of Building Bogus Basin (which is still available for purchase at the Bogus Basin downtown office). A history writer for many years, she returned to the Boise area in 1981, wrote the book in 2009, and just retired off the board of directors of Bogus Basin after nine years.

“People actually were skiing in the 1930s,” Chandler said. “There’s a couple of areas they would ski. One was the American Legion golf course, at the end of 8th Street in the Boise foothills. They would also ski up Horseshoe Bend hill.”

Consequently, when Sun Valley opened, it was only natural for a lot of Boise people to visit, Chandler said. And they came back saying, “’If Sun Valley can do it, we can do it also,’” she said.

Boise’s Junior Chamber of Commerce (the Jaycees) started promoting the idea of a ski resort near Boise. The Boise Ski Club was incorporated with the state of Idaho on February 15, 1938. Members included a group of engineers from Idaho Power. “Those Idaho Power people loved to ski,” Chandler said. “Many of them really were responsible for getting a lot of things done.”

The Jaycees applied for federal grant money from programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), getting help from county, local, and state officials, Chandler said. “It was a big group effort,” she said. “You can’t point to one person or one organization. It was a lot of people working together.”

At around that time, the three Engen brothers – Norwegian emigrees to Utah – were traveling around the western U.S. as ambassadors for skiing. “In 1938, Alf Engen, a ski champion and director of Wasatch National Forest, led searches for a Treasure Valley ski area” that would provide year-round recreation, Chandler said. They started near Pilot Peak to Horseshoe Bend hill, skiing 150 miles altogether in three trips.

“When they got to Bogus, Alf said this was the perfect spot,” Chandler said. “It had the right terrain. Horseshoe wasn’t as steep and didn’t get as much snow, and it was closer than Idaho City so it was more accessible.” At the time it was just 19 miles from Boise, which ended up being 16 miles after the road was shortened.

The basin was already known as Bogus. There were a lot of stories about how Bogus got its name, but Chandler said the definitive reason was based on a group of swindlers from the area in 1866 who melted silver sand and a slight amount of gold to create bogus counterfeit gold.

Funded by the WPA grant, and built by about 120 CCC workers, the project broke ground on November 28, 1938, to build the road, a lodge, and a bunkhouse for the workers, as well as to start grooming trails and creating the first runs. The road ended up costing around $307,000.

The plan was to open Bogus in 1941, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor delayed it for a year. “Some people were up skiing – climbing up the hill and skiing down,” Chandler said. “They went to their car for lunch and heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.” Instead, it officially opened on December 20, 1942.

First runs

In those early years, skiing at Bogus wasn’t like it was today. At first, there was just a 500-foot tow rope. “A rope tow is a cable and they splice it,” attached to a wheel and a motor to turn it, Chandler explained. “They put it up before they even opened – they hung the motor from a car motor from a tree and the motor would turn the rope. The day they opened, it wasn’t working and they had to re-splice it.”

“All we had was the front side,” said Bob Greenwood, founder of Greenwood’s Ski Haus, who moved to Boise in 1950 from Washington state for the skiing. “We skied on snow that we don’t see anymore, because now we machine groom. We skied in chopped-up snow, snow that people have skied on.”

“I was just a ski bum,” said Greenwood – who, at 97, is still planning to ski at Bogus this season. “I taught in the ski school, I worked whenever I could, and I worked in the store” – CNS Sports Equipment, later Idaho Sporting Goods – “when I couldn’t be on the mountain. I skied a couple days a week and taught a couple days a week.”

In those days, the drive to Bogus was nearly as thrilling as skiing down it. Boise sometimes had more snowfall then than it has now, and even Boise streets weren’t always plowed, Greenwood said. The road to Bogus was one-way uphill in the morning, and one-way downhill after 2 p.m. “It was a dirt road that had a lot more corners than it has now,” he said. “Places would turn into mud. Cars would lose mufflers on that road. It was a tough mountain road to drive. They’d plow it, but still.”

Snow would drift in the cuts that went from one range to another. “A couple of times we had to shovel a hundred or two hundred feet to clear a path for the cars to get through,” Greenwood said. A busy day would be a couple of hundred skiers, he said.

Growth years

As the years went by, Bogus improved. First, in 1946 Morrison Knudsen put in a T-bar to get to Doe Point – “where the big cell towers are,” Chandler explained – and then Bogus got its first chairlift in 1959, she said.

Improvements continued over the years. The original Deer Point chairlift was installed in 1959. In December 1964, lights lit up the main runs of the Deer Point chairlift. Planning for two more lifts began in 1964 and skiers enjoyed the new Morning Star and Superior lifts in the 1965-66 ski season. With the addition of the Superior chairlift the Shafer Butte terrain, or commonly called "the back side," was now open to skiers. In 1972, the Showcase lift was added and a year later the Pioneer Lodge was built. In 1976-77 ski season the Pine Creek chairlift opened, increasing terrain on Shafer Butte mountain. The Deer Point lift was upgraded and the Simplot lodge was expanded in 1991.

Bogus was also getting a lot of attention, even nationally. In 1948, it held the first junior national ski championship, and Idaho Power produced a film about it, which got sent to ski clubs all over the country, Chandler said.

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Heavy sledding

However, financially, Bogus wasn’t doing so well. It had always been not for profit – formalizing its status as a 501c3 nonprofit organization in 2005 – but it had some tough years along the way.

In fact, in 1952, it looked like the resort would be shut down. The state highway board refused to remove snow on the road, and “the equipment will be dismantled and sold to another ski resort,” reported the Lewiston Tribune at the time. But Simplot – who used to own a house on the hill on the drive up to Bogus – bought its ski lifts and leased them back to the organization, which helped Bogus survive.

At that point, Boise City recreation director Bill Everts became the Bogus Basin director, which Chandler said he did for seven or eight years on a voluntary basis. “He’s the one who got it really going,” Greenwood said.

But Bogus continued to have lean years, particularly in the mid-1970s, when it actually had to shut down due to drought. Money was always a problem.

Then the Bogus general manager at the time, Mike Shirley, came up with an idea that revolutionized skiing, not only at Bogus, but across the nation. Not only did he sell season passes for $199 – previously $500 – but he made them available during spring skiing the previous season. According to a 2010 Skiing Heritage article, season passes leapt almost ten times, from 2,854 to almost 25,000. The result was discounted season passes all over the country.

Master plan

While that solved the yearly operational funding problem, it didn’t end Bogus’ financial troubles. “Ten years ago, Bogus Basin’s long-term viability was in doubt,” Saad said. “Our organization faced a changing business landscape, financial tension from low snow years, and lacked a current master plan.”

The organization raised money from the City of Boise and the J.A. & Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation to conduct a feasibility study to ensure its future. “At the time of the study, we operated winters only,” Saad said. “Across the industry, areas were adding summer operations, and our feasibility study revealed that our outdoor-oriented community had an interest in year-round recreation at Bogus Basin.” At that point, Bogus retained SE Group, which had conducted the feasibility study, to develop a comprehensive master plan and a strategic business plan. In addition, in 2015, the organization hired Brad Wilson, who had experience working with SE Group on master planning as general manager.

Completed in 2016, the plan for Bogus’ future included three major components.

First was developing revenue-generating summer activities. The resort is now open seven days a week in the summer and offers activities such as a mountain coaster, an adventure course, summer tubing, a bungee trampoline, a climbing wall, and a mountain bike park. In addition, an outdoor plaza, lawn, and a food and beverage outlet supports events such as Music on the Mountain and Yoga on the Mountain, as well as guided nature hikes and other environmental education programs, youth camps in partnership with Boise Parks and Recreation, and racing events.

To go along with the new activities, Austin Smith, innovation and marketing director at Bogus Basin, created a year-round True Bogus Pass that included the summer season.

Second was enhancements to the winter facilities. These included upgraded and expanded access for beginning skiers, new terrain such as new named runs and trails, expanded night lighting, more brush cutting, new grooming equipment, upgraded lodge and food and beverage facilities, and a high-speed quad chairlift.

“Upgrading the Morning Star chairlift to a high-speed quad for the 2019/2020 season transformed our guest experience on the mountain,” Saad said. “This new lift more efficiently transports riders to expert terrain on the back side of the mountain, and provides a much easier load/unload experience for those accessing beginning/intermediate terrain.”

The biggest change was adding snowmaking. Mother Nature had been proving to not be too reliable – in the 2011/2012 season, Bogus didn’t open until January 19, which devastated revenues. To pay for it, Bogus raised $6 million from a capital campaign that took just seven months to complete. The project created a 13-million-gallon retention pond to capture runoff in the winter and spring, which provides snowmaking for up to 13 runs, with plans to add more.

“This addition has helped assure a dependable winter opening date, providing reliable and critical income during unpredictable winter seasons,” Saad said. And the investment has paid off – Bogus enjoyed its longest operating season in its 80-year history during the 2022/23 winter season, staying open into May for the first time, and the resort has reliably opened (at least partially) during the all-important Thanksgiving weekend every year.

The upshot of the three components was a more than $45 million cash investment that completed the ten-year plan in just five years.

Envisioning the future

But Bogus isn’t just sitting on its laurels. It’s now working on a new master plan and is considering aspects such as additional snowmaking, facilities, infrastructure, and expanded terrain, Saad said.

That includes the possible impact of climate change. “Climate change is the #1 threat to the snow sports industry,” Saad said. “We are taking steps across our organization to respond and prepare.” The organization recently joined the National Ski Areas Association Climate Challenge, which is working collaboratively with ski areas to prepare for and address climate change. Moreover, in 2022, the organization retained Warm Springs Consulting to conduct a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the area. Finally, it is expanding its environmental education and stewardship to team to educate the staff and community about best practices for environmental sustainability.

The result should be a Bogus Basin that continues to provide outdoor recreation opportunities for Treasure Valley residents of every age and ability for years to come.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

This story was written by Sharon Fisher. Sharon is a digital nomad specializing in history and tourism. You can read more of her work here.

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