Ski lifts: from a mill-wheel tow to the chairlift.

1908: the first tows

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA), in its series on inventions that made history, says the world's first ski lift went into operation on 14 February 1908 at Schollach, near Eisenbach in the Black Forest. It was built by Robert Winterhalder: a pulling rope driven by water power through a mill wheel, about 280 m long, rising 32 m on five wooden supports. DPMA gives its patents as CH44626A, applied for in 1908, and FR392360A, and says the lift was taken down during the First World War.

The same DPMA page says that also in 1908 the Bödele hill in Vorarlberg, Austria, had a motor-driven cable winch that pulled sleds uphill.

Winterhalder's year is disputed. DPMA gives 14 February 1908 as the date the lift went into operation, and the compiled timeline of the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) also lists 1908. Smithsonian Magazine (2021) gives 1906. A Tagesspiegel article (Isabel Stettin, 2015) also says the story begins in 1906, when the lift's five wooden masts were set in the ground, and that the first riders opened it on 14 February 1908, two years after building began; on that account, 1906 is the start of construction and 1908 the opening.

The 1930s: rope tows in North America

Shawbridge, Quebec

The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN), in an article by Sandra Stock, says Alex Foster invented the rope tow in the winter of 1930, and that by 1931 it ran commercially on the Big Hill at Shawbridge, nicknamed "Foster's Folly". The date is given four ways:

• winter 1930, commercial from 1931 (QAHN, Sandra Stock);
• about 1932 (another QAHN page, seen only in a search summary);
• 1932, as the first North American rope tow (ISHA timeline, credited to sources from 1983 and 1966);
• 1933, a year before Woodstock (Vermont Historical Society).

QAHN says a tow also opened in 1934 on Hill 70 at Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec, and that J-bars and T-bars had replaced most rope tows in the Laurentians by the early 1950s.

Woodstock, Vermont

The Vermont Historical Society says a group of ski enthusiasts built a rope tow on a farm north of Woodstock, Vermont, in 1934, powered by a Model T Ford engine, and credits it with starting the rope-tow era in the United States. The day it opened is disputed: the ISHA timeline gives 28 January 1934, citing interviews and local records, while a reproduction of a 1983 Vermont Life retrospective, seen only in a search summary, gives 18 January 1934.

Davos, 1934: the T-bar

DPMA says the Zurich engineer Ernst Gustav Constam filed Swiss patent CH147025A in 1930 for a towing cableway with rope suspensions for skiers. His lift was financed by the hotelier Leonhard Fopp on his Bolgen slope at Davos and built by Adolf Bleichert and Co. of Leipzig. DPMA describes the first version as 270 m long with a 60 m height difference and J-shaped bars that each carried one person. After the first season, the ski instructor Jack Ettinger proposed a T-shaped bar for two people, which Constam adopted. Swissinfo (2024) says the conversion from J to T came in early winter 1935, and that the lift recorded 70,000 lifts in its first season.

The opening day is given three ways:

DPMA says Constam moved to the United States in 1940, where he reportedly built 80 lifts, and that another Swiss patent of his, CH221789, set out the principle of an aerial ropeway for passengers that underlies the chairlift; the page does not give that patent's year. Swissinfo said in December 2024 that T-bar lifts still made up 44 percent of Switzerland's 1,650 lift installations.

The ISHA timeline lists two North American firsts that followed: the first overhead cable lift in North America, a J-bar at Oak Hill, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1935, and the first T-bar in America, at Pico Peak, Vermont, in 1940. Helen Olsson's 2023 article in ISHA's magazine dates Austria's first surface lift, at Zürs, to 1937.

Sun Valley, 1936: the chairlift

Smithsonian Magazine (Sarah Kuta, 2021) says the Union Pacific Railroad engineer James Curran (1903 to 1968) designed the chairlifts that opened with the railroad's new Sun Valley resort at Ketchum, Idaho, in December 1936, on Proctor and Dollar mountains. It says he based the design on conveyors used to load bananas onto ships, and that US Patent 2,152,235, "Aerial Ski Tramway", was granted on 28 March 1939 to Curran, Glen Trout and Gordon Bannerman. Curran was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2001.

Smithsonian Magazine's headline calls Curran's lift the world's first ski chairlift, and the ISHA timeline also lists 1936 for the first chairlifts, at Sun Valley.

The chairlift spreads

• 1937: the first chairlift in the eastern United States, at Belknap, New Hampshire (ISHA timeline).
• 1938: the first Canadian chairlift, at Mont Tremblant, Quebec (ISHA timeline).
• 1938: the first chairlift in Europe, at Frýdek-Místek, Czechoslovakia (ISHA timeline, uncited, so unconfirmed).
• 1939: Arthur Charette installs a chairlift on Hill 70 at Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts (QAHN).
• Winter 1940 to 1941: on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, the holders of the first state land lease for a ski area, authorised by Governor George Aiken in 1939, build what the Vermont Historical Society calls the world's longest (one mile) and highest aerial chairlift.
• 1946: Jean Pomagalski's first Pomalift in Europe (ISHA timeline).

How lifts are licensed and inspected today, by regulators in North America and Europe, is on lift safety regulators.