by
posted 11/04/2007
Check this out:
http://www.teachski.com/Areas/bousquet/cbousquet.htm
http://www.teachski.com/Areas/bousquet/bousquet2.htm
Founded by CJ Bousquet in the early 1930's, it is a well known fact that Bousquet has bragging rights to being the first ski area in the United States to make snow, the first to offer night skiing (thanks to a 1936 partnership with GE) and the second mountain in America to install a rope tow. Do you have any other memories? Post them on the Forums page.
Remember the Bousquet Ski Tow Gripper.....Patented by Clare Bousquet in 1939
Clare Bousquet was one of the most successful pioneer entrepreneurs in the United States ski industry. His development and managment of "Bousquets" ski area in Massachussetts displayed a flare and knack for invention that led the way in New England in terms of slope design, snow grooming, lift equipment and on slope construction. He was the Father of Ski Area Entrepreneurship. Bousquets attracted unheard of numbers to its slopes despite its relative small size. President Gerald Ford learned to ski there while studying at Yale. Bousquets was the first to introduce night skiing and was a pioneer in the use of area wide snow making.
Bousquet, who has proven to be a successful entrepreneur was also a successful inventor and innovator. To promote his area he got advertisers to pay the cost of the brochure that advertised his ski area. He also solved a problem that many early skiers faced, tired arms and ripped gloves from the rope tows. In 1939, Bousquet invented and patented the Bousquet Rope Tow Gripper, a nutcracker shaped device attached to a wide belt that attached directly to the rope, leaving the skier’s arms free. Over the next 30 years, more than 500,000 were sold. With skier safety ion mind he also invented a safety gate. This prevented skiers from getting tangled up in the machinery at the top of the hill. Eventually, revenues from his inventions made him more money than the ski area ever did.
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