Squaw Valley USA resort founder Alexander Cushing dies

Squaw Valley USA resort founder Alexander Cushing dies{mosimage}RENO, Nevada – Alexander C. Cushing, the founder and chairman of Squaw Valley USA, one of the world’s largest and best-known ski resorts, died at his summer home Saturday, Aug. 19, in Newport, R.I., the resort announced Sunday. He was 92.

Cushing, who helped launch the sport in the U.S. by bringing the 1960 Olympic Winter Games to Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe, California, died of pneumonia, the resort said.

Cushing opened the California resort in 1949 with one chairlift, a rope tow and a 50-room lodge. Today, it is one of the world’s premier resorts, with 34 lifts and an alpine village complete with upscale restaurants, shops and lodging.

Among other things, Cushing set standards for the ski industry with advanced lift systems and cutting-edge facilities, said Warren Lerude, a corporation board member.

“Alex Cushing was one of the great pioneers in the ski industry in America,” Lerude said. “By bringing the Winter Olympics to Squaw Valley, he … helped spark the development of the ski industry in the United States.”

Cushing bid for the games as a publicity stunt, never dreaming he might get them.
His fledgling resort was little known outside California, and he stunned the sports world by beating out internationally known resorts in Europe. He made the cover of Time magazine in 1959.

The Games were the first ever televised, exposing 10 million viewers to what was then considered an elitist sport. Millions of middle-class families caught the skiing bug, and resorts proliferated.

The games brought international attention to the Sierra resort and sparked a development boom at Lake Tahoe, sparsely populated at the time. Ironically, Cushing acknowledged he was never much of a skier.

“I was never a good skier,” he told The Associated Press in 1995. “I could get down the slopes. But now, it’s a lot more like snipping daisies and flowers.”

Cushing fought with environmentalists and government officials for years over everything from ski runs to diesel fuel contamination. In 1989, the Sierra Club and Hewlett-Packard Co. co-founder William Hewlett sued him for $4.5 million, claiming he cut down thousands of trees for a new ski run without permits. In 1999, the resort was accused of blasting large chunks of a mountain and allowing the excavated material to wash into a sensitive stream without permits.

Born in New York City, Cushing graduated from Harvard Law School and joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. He gave up a legal career to start the resort after a friend took him to California in 1946. He opened the resort with the backing of relatives and friends.

— The Associated Press