USU Libraries produce oral history of Beaver Mountain Ski Resort

Snow covers the Beaver Face Lift lift house on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. Photo by Eric Frandsen

LOGAN – The Beaver Mountain Ski Resort, 27 miles up Logan Canyon, is the focus of a new digital collection produced by Utah State University Libraries highlighting the resort’s history dating back to 1939.

Marge Seeholzer, now president of the resort, agrees Beaver Mountain is a central part of the Northern Utah winter sports community.

“Yes, and that’s the fun part of my job, where I still sell tickets,” Seeholzer said. “I’m seeing like third generations, the families that come back to ski. I’ve met so many hundreds of people, and I love that.”

Marge married Ted Seeholzer in 1964  — he always called her the “true boss” — and with his death in 2013 she took over the operation. She said it hasn’t been easy.

“No, in fact my kids think I’m way too frugal. I think they think I’m tight, because I always worry about overspending, because I’ve seen the days when we didn’t have snow in the winter and where we had to put second mortgages on our homes,” she explained. “My in-laws, especially, had to go through a lot of sacrifices like that. It’s worth it though, because most every resort has gone corporate and I just love that we’re still family owned.”

She said one of the ironies of the resort’s history is how the Covid-19 pandemic was actually good for business.

“Oh my gosh, it did increase our business,” Seeholzer exclaimed. “We had no idea, we were so nervous trying to get our ducks in a row, not knowing what to do really because Covid was quite new then. It increased our business a lot.

“One thing: we didn’t require advance reservations, most of the resorts did. And that gets really complex and hard when people wake up one morning and it’s snowing and they want to go skiing. I think everyone was looking for something normal and felt they could get outside without risking their health.”

Beaver Mountain is now the longest continuously-run family-owned mountain resort in the United States.

The digital collection project started in the spring of 2022 when grad students from Lisa Gabbert’s seminar in oral history and folklore set about explaining the resort’s place in the community.

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