A Tiny Colorado Town Buys its Ski Area
Nederland, Colorado, takes on a challenge, and an opportunity.
If things go as planned, the town of Nederland, Colorado, will have purchased its neighborhood ski area, Eldora Mountain Resort, from Powdr Corp in early 2026. The town has floated a municipal revenue bond, backed by resort revenues on approximately 400,000 annual skier visits, to purchase the area for reportedly about $120 million. Local taxpayers will not be affected, but locals cross their fingers that Eldora revenues will bolster the town’s budget. Powdr will assist with management for two winters, after which the town will assume full responsibility and Eldora’s staff will be paid as town employees.
Photo top: Eldora's base elevation of 9,200 feet and 100 percent snowmaking coverage translate to a consistent snow surface. The ski area is only 21 miles from Boulder and 47 miles from Denver. Eldora photo.
Founded in 1963, Eldora long languished in the shadow of larger ski resorts to the west of the Continental Divide.
In 1991 a trio of new owners, Billy Killebrew, Chuck Lewis and Graham Anderson, brought savvy management and
capital improvements. As Interstate 70 clotted up with
weekend traffic, Eldora became an attractive alternative for Front Range skiers and business boomed. The trio sold the area to Powdr in 2016.
For Utah-based Powdr, the sale is part of an ongoing reorganization, apparently aimed at rebalancing holdings toward multi-season operations. The company sold Lee Canyon (near Las Vegas, Nevada) and Killington/Pico (Vermont) in 2024, then Silver Star (British Columbia) in November 2025. These transactions leave Powdr holding onto its largest properties—Copper Mountain, Snowbird and Mt. Bachelor—plus three smaller Woodward snow-park resorts at Boreal and Soda Springs (California) and Park City.
In the meantime, the company has been stocking up on multi-season properties such as the concessions at Death Valley’s Stovepipe Wells and Zion National Park, along with a river-rafting operation in Oregon and Utah’s Powderbird heliskiing service.
Skiers often prefer to see the local hill in the hands of local management, rather than being managed by a distant and relatively impersonal multi-resort corporation. Killington was sold in 2024 to a group of local investors, as was Ragged Mountain, New Hampshire, another sale announced in November.
There never was much chance that Eldora would wind up in either the Vail or Alterra empires, though it does belong to Alterra’s Ikon Pass consortium. Because Eldora lies in Boulder County, which has long opposed any on-site hotel and condo development, the big corporations can’t expect hospitality and real-estate revenue there so didn’t bid for the ski area. Eldora’s roughly 400,000 annual skier visits will continue to drive from the Greater Boulder metropolitan area; they all have to pass through Nederland’s commercial district, where merchants and motels won’t have to compete with Vail- or Alterra-owned shops and hotels.
Precedent for Government-Run Ski Areas
Nederland, population 1,500, becomes one of the smallest American municipalities to own a ski area. The biggest such entity, of course, is Winter Park, Colorado, just 11 air miles away over Corona Pass. Winter Park was created and owned by the City of Denver beginning in 1939. The city managed the resort until 2002, when it signed a management contract with Intrawest; that contract was assumed by Alterra in 2018.
By contrast, the Nederland/Eldora relationship looks like a tail-wagging-the-dog arrangement. While it occupies just 680 acres, Eldora has 10 lifts with a total uphill capacity of nearly 14,000 skiers per hour and a payroll of 700 employees.
The oldest such town/area marriage is Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, founded by the local ski club in 1915 and acquired by the city in 1937. (Howelsen is also the oldest continuously operating ski area in the United States.)
Elsewhere in Colorado, smaller ski areas are operated by the cities of Durango, Ouray (population 1,000), Gunnison and Silverton; each is served by a single surface lift and adult season passes sell for about $100 (except at Silverton’s Kendall Mountain, where the 250-foot vertical warrants a $216 season pass).
Duluth, Minnesota, operates Spirit Mountain, established by the state legislature in 1979 as a magnet for tourism; the city typically supports the four-season activity center with about $225,000 a year of tourism tax revenue.
The State of New York operates three full-size ski areas, originally run by the Department of Conservation and later (after the 1980 Olympics) by the Olympic Regional Development Authority. Belleayre opened in 1950; Whiteface in 1958 (the operation moved from windy Marble Mountain, established in 1949); and Gore Mountain in 1964 (preceded by North Creek, where ski trails were first cut in 1934).
In New Hampshire, county-owned Belknap Mountain (now Gunstock) launched in 1937; the following year, the state government opened Cannon Mountain.
The federal government played an important role in many of these developments, at least during the 1930s. During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration was eager to subsidize local economic-stimulus projects. Grants and matching funds were available from the Works Progress Administration to help cut trails and build lifts and lodges; the Civilian Conservation Corps cut dozens of ski trails on public lands across the country. Each project could employ hundreds of construction workers for a couple of years, then jump-start the local economy through privately owned lodges, restaurants and retail stores.
Government-owned resorts of any significant size face
political as well as financial challenges. Commercially owned ski areas inevitably object to competition from taxpayer-funded entities; to level the playing field, government-owned areas usually wind up adopting commercial-equivalent prices for tickets and lease their restaurant and retail space to local businesses.
In Nederland, the sentiment seems split between anxiety about the town’s competence to manage the resort’s finances, and hope that resort revenues—and associated skier business—will help rebuild a centrally located strip mall after a fire in October destroyed 20 local businesses. 
For a brief history of Eldora from its founding in 1963,
see skiinghistory.org/history/eldora-mountain-colorado-history.
Snapshots in Time
1958 Don’t Overpay for Your Boots
You can pay up to $100 for a pair of ski boots, but there is so much value to be had in the lower price ranges, it seems hardly worthwhile to spend that much—except for the discriminating expert who insists on the very best of everything. If you ski only a couple of weekends a season, the least expensive double boots will serve nicely. You can’t tell the quality of a boot simply by looking at it. Your local ski shop operator is usually a good guide. — Editors, “What to Look for in Basic Equipment.” (SKI magazine, October 1958)
1969 Par for the Course?
One of the most important innovations to cross tracks with recreational skiing since the introduction of the rope tow completed its experimental phase today here in the High Sierras. The occasion was the championship round of this season’s National Standard Race (NASTAR). This program is designed to award handicaps, as in golf, to participants—but in seconds rather than in strokes. The program, which is being conducted by the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company and Ski Magazine, will present skiers with something more than just the opportunity to run up and down slopes with no other incentive than trying to survive. NASTAR tests the skier’s skill and awards him a gold, silver or bronze pin depending upon how his clocking over a given course stacks up against “par”—or the time established by any given ski area’s pace-setter. — Michael Strauss, “Handicap Ratings and Tourneys Spur Duffer Interest in Skiing.” (New York Times, March 5, 1969)
1977 Fear and Loathing on the Slopes
Thanks for the kind offer [to write an article for Powder], but skiing has always struck me as a foot fetishist’s answer to golf—and I can’t quite get into it. O.K.? — Hunter S. Thompson, “Hunter Who?” (Letters, Powder magazine, November 1977)
2022 Just Add Snow
China did not move mountains to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it flooded a dried riverbed, diverted water from a key reservoir that supplies Beijing and resettled hundreds of farmers and their families, all to feed one of the most extensive snow-making operations in the history of the Games. This is what happens when the International Olympic Committee decides to bring the Winter Games to a place almost completely lacking in one of the main ingredients for winter sports: snow. — Raymond Zhong, “Beijing Wanted the Winter Olympics. All It Needed Was Snow.” (New York Times, February 22, 2022)
2024 Hello, Old Friend
Salt Lake City will host the Winter Olympics in 2034, the International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday, bringing the Games back to the Utah capital 32 years after its first hosting stint. For months, Salt Lake City has been the targeted host city for 2034 as climate change, ballooning costs and infrastructure challenges have led the IOC to ditch its old bidding process in favor of seeking out suitable host cities, particularly for the Winter Games. The city’s bid emphasized the array of venues still in use three decades after it last hosted; no new permanent venue construction is planned. With Los Angeles set to host the Summer Olympics in 2028, it means the Games will return to the U.S. just six years later. — Zack Pierce and Matthew Futterman, “Salt Lake City gets 2034 Winter Olympics, 2030 to French Alps: Why now, and what it means.” (The Athletic, July 25, 2024)