The Last Family-Owned Ski Resorts in America

Marge Seeholzer sits in the ticket office at Beaver Mountain six days a week, just as she has for decades. She’s 83 now, and she still greets skiers by name, sells them paper tickets from a wooden rack, and asks about their kids. Her late husband Ted used to call her “the true boss.” He was probably right.

Outside the window, four chairlifts carry skiers up 1,700 vertical feet of terrain in Utah’s Bear River Mountains. The lifts are named Harry’s Dream, Marge’s Triple, Little Beaver, and the Beaver Face. Every one of them commemorates a Seeholzer. The base lodge was built in 1963. The parking lot was paved in sections as money allowed. There is no village, no spa, no $35 hamburger.

On a Saturday in January, Beaver Mountain’s parking lot fills with cars bearing Cache Valley plates. Families unload gear at the A-frame lodge. College kids from Utah State pile out of vans. The scene repeats itself at ski areas across the American West, though with decreasing frequency. These are the survivors – the family-owned, independently operated ski resorts that have refused to sell, merge, or disappear into the spreadsheets of Vail Resorts or Alterra Mountain Company.

The question is not whether they can survive. Most of them are profitable, some wildly so. The question is what gets sacrificed in the pursuit of independence.

The Arithmetic of Consolidation

Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company now control over 50 percent of total U.S. lift capacity, despite owning just 53 ski areas combined. The remaining 86 percent of ski areas – roughly 320 mountains – operate independently. But they account for only 14 percent of total skier visits.

Before the Ikon Pass launched and Vail Resorts more than doubled in size the following, most skiers weren’t particularly aware of or concerned about who owned which mountains. Then came the buying spree. From 2017 to 2019, multimountain operators acquired 56 ski areas. After a pandemic pause, another 22 resorts changed hands between 2021 and 2023.

In 2024, the pace slowed but didn’t stop entirely. Powdr Corp announced it would sell Killington and Pico to local investors, and put Mt. Bachelor, Eldora, and SilverStar up for sale – the largest divestment by a major operator in years. The sales represented a shift from consolidation to strategic repositioning, as Powdr focused on its Copper and Snowbird holdings while expanding into national parks concessions.

The resorts still standing outside the duopoly have learned something about the cost of remaining independent.

Beaver Mountain: The Arithmetic of Small

Harold Seeholzer got his first store-bought skis in 1918. He was 16 years old. Nearly two decades later, in 1937, he and the Mt. Logan Ski Club started pushing their way up Logan Canyon in northern Utah, hiking a mile from the highway to reach the site that would become Beaver Mountain. In 1945, the club accepted Harold’s proposal to take over the ski area operation.

He installed a 1,000-foot rope tow powered by money he didn’t have and equipment he couldn’t afford. His wife Luella served burgers and hot cocoa in a warming hut. Beaver Mountain was officially dedicated on February 10, 1952. Today it is the longest continuously operated family-owned ski area in the United States.

Travis Seeholzer, Harold’s grandson, now manages the mountain alongside his brother Jeff and sister Annette. His kids represent the fourth generation. They all live within a few miles of the base area, and on any given day, you might find Travis running a snowcat, fixing a chairlift motor, or explaining to a visitor why Beaver Mountain doesn’t make snow.

“We’re 90 percent mountain and 10 percent resort,” Travis said in 2022. “At our core, that’s what we are – a ski hill.”

The distinction matters. A ski hill operates on different economics than a resort. Beaver Mountain has 1,100 acres of terrain, four chairlifts, and a 1,700-foot vertical drop. It receives 400 inches of snow annually and owns zero snowmaking guns. When conditions are marginal, Beaver opens late or not at all. When conditions are good, locals fill the parking lot and skiers from Salt Lake City make the 110-mile drive to escape the crowds at Brighton and Snowbird.

Walk-up lift tickets cost around $70. A season pass runs a few hundred dollars. These prices exist in a different competitive landscape than Vail’s Epic Pass, which offers unlimited skiing at dozens of resorts for roughly the cost of four days at Beaver. Beaver competes instead on the experience itself – shorter lift lines, familiar faces, terrain that doesn’t require an app to navigate.

The economics work because the Seeholzers never borrowed against future growth. They installed Harry’s Dream chairlift in 1970 – named for Harold, who died of cancer the year before he could see it built – by saving for years. When Ted and Marge officially bought the company in 1990, they brought their children into the operation with the understanding that the mountain would remain a family affair. No investors. No debt. No exit strategy.

This creates both stability and constraint. Beaver Mountain will never compete with Park City on terrain, amenities, or marketing budget. It will also never answer to shareholders demanding quarterly growth or private equity partners expecting a seven-year return.

Bolton Valley: The Cost of Coming Home

Ralph DesLauriers spotted the bowl from a helicopter in the 1960s while serving as a captain in the Vermont National Guard. The family had sold part of their dairy farm to create interstate exits in Burlington and South Burlington, and used that money to buy timberland in Bolton. Ralph built the bulk of Bolton Valley Resort in under eight months in 1966 – three chairlifts, nine trails, a base lodge, a restaurant, and 24 hotel rooms.

His vision was simple: a place where working people could ski after work. Bolton became famous for night skiing. It remained independent for three decades. Then the bad years arrived.

By 1997, mounting financial challenges and bad snow years forced Ralph to sell. The resort changed hands twice over 20 years. The new owners were competent but distant. Improvements stalled. The energy faded.

In 2015, the then-owners contacted Ralph to ask if he’d be interested in buying Bolton back. He was 80 years old. His youngest son Evan suggested they write a business plan. In 2017, the DesLauriers family and a group of local investors bought back the resort, with the family as largest shareholders.

Lindsay DesLauriers, Ralph’s daughter, became president and CEO. Her brother Adam runs the backcountry program. Evan manages capital improvements. They all live on the same street.

Ralph died in October 2025 at age 90. His legacy was a commitment to making skiing accessible to locals, not just something out-of-state visitors enjoyed. The family continues that mission, but the economics have changed. Bolton operates just under 1,000 acres of owned terrain and leases another 1,200 from the Vermont Land Trust. It competes against Stowe Mountain Resort, which Vail purchased in 2017, and Sugarbush, which Alterra acquired in 2020.

The pressure shows in the details. Bolton has installed LED lights for night skiing, converted 35 snowmaking guns from diesel to electric compressors, and built a wind turbine and solar field. These are capital improvements that require serious money. The family secured financing through the Vermont Economic Development Authority and investors like the Flexible Capital Fund, which saw Bolton as both a sustainable business and a community asset.

“We were given an opportunity to fight for our roots and come back home,” Lindsay said in 2021. The word “fight” does heavy lifting in that sentence.

Mad River Glen: Democracy as Business Model

On December 5, 1995, something unprecedented happened in American skiing. A group of skiers formed the Mad River Glen Cooperative, purchasing the Vermont ski area from owner Betsy Pratt. The cooperative works to forever protect the classic Mad River Glen skiing experience by preserving low skier density, natural terrain and forests, varied trail character, and friendly community atmosphere.

The structure is radical. A share costs $2,000 and can be purchased through a single payment or in monthly installments. Shareholders must meet an annual $200 Advance Purchase Requirement, which can be applied to season passes, tickets, lessons, or food. As of October 2025, the cooperative reached its bylaw-mandated capacity of 2,500 shareholders. If you want to buy in now, you join a waitlist.

Every shareholder gets one vote. The cooperative elects a board of trustees who oversee management and hire a general manager for day-to-day operations. Major decisions require shareholder approval. This is not collective ownership as utopian fantasy. It’s collective ownership as legal structure designed to prevent the kind of consolidation that has consumed the rest of the industry.

Mad River Glen is one of three ski areas in the U.S. that ban snowboarding – a policy that shareholders voted to uphold with more than 75 percent approval. Whether you find this exclusionary or principled depends largely on whether you ride a board or skis, but it illustrates the model’s central feature: the shareholders decide, and the shareholders don’t have to maximize quarterly earnings.

The cooperative model solves the problem of succession – no family members who don’t want to run a ski area, no generational feuds, no forced sales. It creates a different problem: governance by committee. Every expansion, every capital improvement, every policy change requires consensus among 2,500 opinionated skiers.

In 2007, shareholders faced a choice that crystallized the cooperative’s priorities. The Single Chair – one of only two single chairlifts still operating in North America – needed replacement or complete rebuild. A modern quad would have cost less and moved more skiers. But it would have fundamentally altered the mountain’s character and carrying capacity. Shareholders voted to rebuild the Single Chair, raising over $1.8 million to preserve it. The lift still runs today, loading slowly, breaking down occasionally, and serving as a physical manifestation of values that can’t be quantified on a balance sheet.

Monarch Mountain: The Quiet Consolidator’s Mountain

Bob Nicolls runs one of the largest apartment management companies in the United States. In 2002, Nicolls led an investment group that purchased Monarch Mountain ski area in Colorado for slightly more than $5 million. He was told it couldn’t work. The ski industry in 2002 was listing heavily toward real estate. Without condos to sell, the conventional wisdom went, it was almost impossible to make money.

Fifteen years later, Monarch is thriving. In 2021-22, the ski area saw record visitation with income climbing 20 percent above the previous season. Season pass sales have grown 25 to 30 percent annually over the past five years. The mountain’s bank accounts are flush enough that officials plan to pay cash for a major expansion.

This year, Monarch opened No Name Basin – 377 acres of new terrain with 10 to 12 intermediate and advanced runs and approximately 1,000 vertical feet, served by a new triple chairlift. The expansion represents roughly a 50 percent increase in skiable terrain. The Forest Service approval process took 13 years. Nicolls paid for it in cash.

Monarch sits atop Monarch Pass on U.S. Highway 50, one of two chairlift-served ski areas in Colorado that still lacks snowmaking. It averages 350 inches of snow annually, yet most Colorado skiers drive past it without stopping. This suits Nicolls fine.

“We’re still this little guy compared to everybody else, but we like where we’re at,” director of marketing Geoff Stroud said in 2024. “We’re financially successful right now and we don’t plan on ever being not independent. At least as long as this ownership’s around.”

The Monarch model is different from Beaver’s generational ownership or Mad River Glen’s cooperative structure. Nicolls runs a for-profit investment group with multiple partners. But the group prioritizes long-term stability over quarterly returns. Nicolls keeps enough cash accessible to cover what he calls a “nuclear winter” – enough to pay employees even if the ski area doesn’t open, ensuring they’ll return the following year.

Monarch joined the Mountain Collective and later the Indy Pass – multi-resort products that drive awareness without the unlimited access model that can overrun a mountain. The strategy worked. Pass membership brought new skiers while maintaining the experience that locals valued.

Monarch’s success ripples through Salida, the river town 20 miles east. Winter sales tax revenue in Salida grew from $1.29 million in 2009 to $1.88 million in 2016, with every month of winter showing year-over-year growth. Before Nicolls bought Monarch, winter was off-season in Salida. Now it’s a genuine economic driver.

The Trade-Offs

What these resorts offer is not romantic defiance but calculated trade-offs. They sacrifice scale, amenities, and sometimes snowmaking infrastructure. In return, they preserve decision-making authority, community ties, and operational flexibility that corporate structures can’t replicate.

Beaver Mountain will never have high-speed lifts or a gondola. It will also never have surge pricing, blackout dates, or a strategic planning department in Denver making decisions about staffing levels in Logan Canyon.

Bolton Valley operates on tight margins with aging infrastructure. It also brought back night skiing, expanded backcountry access, and prioritizes local ski programs over maximizing revenue per skier visit.

Mad River Glen’s Single Chair is a 1948 relic that breaks down periodically and loads slowly. It’s also protected, ensuring it can’t be replaced with a modern quad that would fundamentally alter the mountain’s character.

Monarch could sell tomorrow for multiples of what Nicolls paid in 2002. Instead, it’s expanding with cash reserves while maintaining enough liquidity to survive a season without opening.

The common thread is not that these resorts reject growth or modernization. It’s that they retain the authority to make those decisions on their own timeline, according to their own priorities, without answering to external shareholders who expect consistent returns regardless of snow conditions or community impact.

The Question of Succession

The challenge facing independent resorts is not current profitability but future continuity. Family businesses require family members willing to run them. Cooperatives require engaged shareholders. Investment groups require partners aligned on long-term strategy.

At Beaver Mountain, the Seeholzer grandchildren are now in their 40s and 50s. Their children – the fourth generation – are teenagers and young adults. Whether they’ll want to run a small ski area in Logan Canyon remains unknown.

Bolton Valley solved succession by bringing it back into the family, but that required both capital and timing. Ralph DesLauriers got a second chance. Most founders don’t.

Mad River Glen’s cooperative structure theoretically solves succession in perpetuity. But it also requires constant engagement from 2,500 shareholders, many of whom will eventually age out or move away or lose interest in voting on chairlift maintenance schedules.

Monarch’s succession depends on whether Nicolls and his investment partners can find buyers who share their commitment to independence. The mountain’s financial success makes it an attractive acquisition target – exactly the situation that leads to consolidation.

What Independence Buys

Stand in the Beaver Mountain parking lot on a Saturday morning and watch families unload skis from their cars. Many have been coming here for decades. Some learned to ski here as children and are now teaching their own kids. They know the lift operators by name. They know which runs get sun first. They know that Marge still works the ticket window six days a week.

This is what independence preserves – not amenities or terrain, but relationships and continuity that can’t be replicated through corporate management. The resorts that remain independent do so at considerable cost. They forgo the capital that corporate ownership provides. They operate with smaller margins and older infrastructure. They compete against season passes that offer unlimited skiing at dozens of resorts for less than the cost of a week at a single independent mountain.

But they retain something that can’t be purchased or replicated: the ability to operate according to their own values, on their own timeline, accountable to their own communities rather than distant shareholders.

The consolidation wave has crested, at least temporarily. The 2024 Powdr divestments suggest that even mid-sized operators are reassessing their portfolios. But the underlying economics haven’t changed. Independent resorts remain attractive targets. Family owners age. Capital requirements grow. The pressure to sell intensifies.

For now, Marge Seeholzer still sells paper tickets at Beaver Mountain. Lindsay DesLauriers still runs Bolton Valley with her brothers on the same street where they grew up. Mad River Glen’s 2,500 shareholders still vote on major decisions. Bob Nicolls still pays cash for expansions at Monarch. These are the survivors. The question is whether they’re outliers or pioneers of an alternative model that proves sustainable after all.

The answer will determine not just the fate of these particular mountains, but whether American skiing retains any meaningful alternative to corporate consolidation – whether there remains space in the industry for resorts that measure success by something other than skier visits and revenue per customer, that answer to their communities rather than distant shareholders, that preserve the human-scale operations where skiing began.

For now, at least, they’re still here. Still independent. Still fighting.

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