Workhorse 2.0 1

The world's first three ski chairlifts were created for the ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho in 1936 and 1937, then owned by the Union Pacific Railroad.[19] The first chairlift, since removed, was installed on Proctor Mountain, two miles (3 km) east of the more famous Bald Mountain, the primary ski mountain of Sun Valley resort since 1939. One of the chairlifts still remains on Ruud Mountain, named for Thomas Ruud a famous Norwegian ski racer. The chairlift has been preserved with its ski jump and original single chairs as it was during WWII. The chairlift was developed by James Curran of Union Pacific's engineering department in Omaha during the summer of 1936. Prior to working for Union Pacific, Curran worked for Paxton and Vierling Steel, also in Omaha, which engineered banana conveyor systems to load cargo ships in the tropics. (PVS manufactured these chairs in their Omaha, NE facility.) Curran re-engineered the banana hooks with chairs and created a machine with greater capacity than the up-ski toboggan (cable car) and better comfort than the J-bar, the two most common skier transports at the time—apart from mountain climbing. His basic design is still used for chairlifts today. The patent for the original ski lift was issued to Mr. Curran along with Gordon H. Bannerman and Glen H. Trout (Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific RR) in March 1939. The patent was titled "Aerial Ski Tramway,'U.S. Patent 2,152,235. W. Averell Harriman, Sun Valley's creator and former governor of New York State, financed the project.[20][21]