Sun Valley

Sun Valley's origins as America's first purpose-built ski resort gave it structural advantages still visible today. The Union Pacific Railroad commissioned Austrian count Felix Schaffgotsch to find the ideal American ski mountain in 1935; he found Bald Mountain in the Wood River Valley of central Idaho and reported that it was better than anything he had seen in Europe. The resort opened in December 1936 with the world's first chairlift, conceived by Union Pacific engineer James Curran based on a banana-loading device he observed in the tropics. Ernest Hemingway came in 1939, stayed, wrote much of For Whom the Bell Tolls here, and is buried in the Ketchum Cemetery. Bald Mountain (Baldy) rises 3,400 feet above the valley floor to a summit at 9,150 feet, with uninterrupted north-facing vertical runs that maintain powder longer than most resorts. The Wood River Trail runs 20 miles through Ketchum, Sun Valley, and Hailey on a paved path following the Big Wood River. The Big Wood River itself is one of Idaho's finest dry-fly streams, with wild rainbow and brown trout through the Ketchum corridor. Ketchum's main street has become something of a sophisticated small-town destination in its own right, with restaurants, galleries, and a year-round cultural calendar.