What do bananas and ski resorts have in common?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 27, 2001
Series: | 1 | | 2 |
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading—>Click here.
There are approximately 300 varieties of bananas (Musa X paradisiaca), but in the northern temperate regions, little attention is paid to the fruit. The yellow banana is familiar; but few northerners know that the popularity of bananas and snow skiing went
hand-in-hand.
In 1870, a ship's captain, Lorenzo Dow Baker, purchased 160 bunches of bananas in Jamaica and sailed straight to Jersey City in eleven days. Those bananas retailed at 10 cents each, just slightly less than what they retail for today. But 10 cents then was equivalent to approximately three dollars now. There were high profits in bananas.
By the early decades of the 20th century, banana production was booming. It became simply too cumbersome to have plank ways of men carrying bunches of bananas onto ships. A U.S. ironworks company designed and installed an overhead conveyor to hoist the banana bunches to the ship. Then the bananas were off-loaded into the cargo holds. One crew on the dock, one crew in the cargo hold.
In 1935, W. Averell Harriman was into banking, shipbuilding, and railroads. As president of Union Pacific, he had a very nice railroad across the U.S. Freight is fine, but passengers are better. To get people on the trains, they needed a destination. What better than an exclusive winter resort and who knows more about resorts than the debonair Austrian downhill skier Count Felix Schaffgatsch?
Sun Valley, Idaho—Count Felix found the perfect spot, Averell Harriman bought it and built the resort. Snow skiing is fun, getting to the top on the mountain is not. Skiers could hike up. Skiers could ride in a horse-drawn sled. Or skiers could hold onto a rope pulled by a team of horses. Of course, if someone near the front of the tow
rope fell...Skiing was fun, but not all that popular.
For his resort, Harriman wanted a better way. He contacted Jim Curran, one of his engineers in Omaha. Curran had previously worked for the company that designed the banana conveyor. Curran designed a chair that would hang from the overhead conveyor, but he still needed to work out problems like height of the chair and speed of the conveyor.
In the dry and dusty Union Pacific rail yard in Omaha, a volunteer with roller skates was scooped and dropped dozens of times until the chairlift was perfected. With an overhead conveyor to handle the traffic, bananas and skiers became multi-million dollar businesses.
The original lifts are long-gone. To watch ski cams, snow cams, resort cams, mountain cams from ski resorts and other travel destinations across the country, click on the link:
http://www.rsn.com/cams/view_all.html
Click on the photos to enlarge the image. That image can be further enlarged or you can click to send a postcard.
Series: | 1 | | 2 |
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
What is the Fruit of the Wise Men? Herbal Folklore - November 26, 2001
A tale of fireflies, monkeys, mangroves, bananas, and bats Renfield's Garden - November 28, 2001
Why is the banana like a mule? Weird Plants - November 29, 2001
What is a banana republic? What's in a Name? - November 30, 2001
Why were bananas sacred? Herbal Folklore - August 25, 2003
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