VAIL — The success of Vail Mountain was far from assured in 1966. The idea to create a full-fledged town out of a ski resort base area was no sure thing, either. But both today are thriving.
With the Vail ski area struggling financially in the mid-1960s, people from Vail Associates — the precursor to Vail Resorts — and those who lived in the community decided that the base area needed to become a town, primarily to establish a tax base. A town would also be able to issue debt to pay for things such as police and fire protection as well as water and sewer lines and streets.
Like just about everything else about Vail’s early days, it wasn’t easy, and required some creativity.
Rod Slifer, who moved to Vail before the start of the 1962-63 season, recalls that while the resort company and residents agreed on the need to create a town, the number of property owners in the proposed town boundaries fell short of state requirements.
To get the numbers up, Slifer said Vail Associates sold a pair of lots on the west end of Forest Road to a pair of groups. There were enough people in those groups to meet the state-required numbers. Vail Associates also helped the town sell its first revenue bonds, Slifer said. At the time, Denver investment bank Boettcher & Company was the only financial institution willing to sell bonds for the fledgling town. Some of Vail Associates’ original investors bought the bulk of those bonds.
While the success of the new town was as uncertain as the future of the ski resort, some residents had to stick around.
