Did you know that Schweitzer began with a hike in ski boots? On Memorial Day in 1960, Spokane dentist Jack Fowler, his son Tom, and Spokane architect Grant Groesbeck backpacked into Schweitzer Basin and skied the South Bowl. Their first idea was a modest one, little more than a shack and a rope tow, but standing in that big, snow-filled bowl, the three men could already picture something far larger: a ski area close to home for the people of Sandpoint and Spokane.
The seed had been planted a few weeks earlier. In April 1960, Fowler was driving home from a ski trip to Big Mountain in Montana when he stopped for a break near Hope, Idaho, and looked up at the mountain. Snow still filled Schweitzer Basin long after it had melted off the neighboring ridges, held there by the protective shape of the bowl. He came back again and again to study it, on foot, by all-terrain vehicle, and even on flyovers, and each trip made him more certain the basin could work.
Fowler and Groesbeck then had to sell the idea, and Sandpoint bought in. The two Spokane men talked the proposal over with community leaders who included Bud Moon, Jim Parsons, Mayor Floyd Gray, and banker Bill Ballard, and fund-raising followed through stock sales and federal grants. In the early 1960s, Fowler and Groesbeck formed a partnership with Sandpoint sawmill owner Jim Brown, who had recognized the skiing potential of the Schweitzer and Colburn bowls back in the early 1930s. The partners secured loans, put in their own money, and raised more from local people. Schweitzer started as a community-owned mountain, and local children famously saved their coins to buy a single ten-dollar share.
Building it happened fast. Sam Wormington, who had built and managed the North Star ski area in Kimberley, British Columbia, was named manager before construction began in the summer of 1963. A road was built up the mountain, and a three-story day lodge designed by Groesbeck himself rose at the base. Schweitzer Basin opened on December 4, 1963, with that lodge, a mile-long double chairlift, and a rope tow. Jim and Margaret Toomey of Post Falls bought lift tickets number one and number two, a T-bar was added in January 1964, and the official dedication followed on March 1, 1964.
Fowler lived to tell the whole story himself. In 1991 he published Looking Back on Schweitzer, written with Ross Woodward, tracing the resort from his 1960 inspiration through the plans for the 1990-91 season. So the next time you ride a lift above the South Bowl, picture those three men climbing in on foot in the spring of 1960, carrying a dream that a whole town would soon help build. That hike is where every Schweitzer ski day still begins.