Americans' love affair with skiing detailed

NEW YORK — Wooden skis and leather boots gave way to metal and Fiberglass skis and plastic boots. Chairlifts eclipsed rope tows. Ski trains lost out to cars and planes. Bumpy trails with uneven coatings of natural snow were made nearly perfect by snowmaking and grooming. And for resorts, condo sales and snowboarding became as crucial to the bottom line as skiers buying lift tickets.

Throughout all these changes, as documented in John Fry's recent book, "The Story of Modern Skiing" (University Press of New England, $27.95), Americans have maintained their passion for zooming down a snowy slope. And if you think Hollywood stars living it up in Vail is something new, guess again. One of the book's highlights is Fry's depiction of the luster that celebrities and power brokers have long added to skiing.

Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin enjoyed skiing in California in the '30s, writes Fry, who is the former editor-in-chief of SKI magazine. Mont Tremblant in Quebec, Canada, was a favorite spot for the likes of Nelson Rockefeller and tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Sugarbush opened in Vermont in 1959 and became a hangout for designer Oleg Cassini and his crowd, while, according to the book, Bobby Kennedy and his family spent Christmas at Aspen in 1964 along with the recently widowed Jackie Kennedy and her children. One of Bobby's children, Michael Kennedy, died in a skiing accident there 33 years later.

Sun Valley, Idaho, which Fry describes as North America's first destination ski resort, was created by William Averell Harriman, a politician and diplomat who was also the chairman of Union Pacific Railroad. Located at the end of the railway line, Sun Valley opened in 1936 with the very first chairlifts, which Fry writes were designed by an engineer based on his knowledge of how fruit companies loaded bananas on ships in Central America.

While Fry says that modern skiing really didn't begin until after World War II, ski trips and outings organized by Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., and by the Appalachian Mountain Club, helped create interest in the sport in the East in the 1920s. Even earlier, immigrants from Scandinavia and Central Europe helped popularize it, both as a participatory sport and as a spectator sport of jumping and speed skiing.

At shows in Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden, skiers hurled themselves off ramps covered with shaved ice; in 1936, Saks Fifth Avenue let customers practice skiing on an indoor slide covered with Borax.