Timberline Lodge: From great depression job creator to ski resort icon
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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Its exterior is known worldwide as the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, but Timberline Lodge’s history has deeper, and less sinister, roots.
The Lodge was originally built in an effort to employ Oregonians during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Works Progress Administration.”
Using almost entirely local materials, hundreds of Oregonians came together to build the lodge.
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On September 28, 1937, FDR dedicated the Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood National Forest.
In 1955, Richard L. Kohnstamm took over the lodge and turned it into a ski resort, although it took some time before the lodge’s popularity would rise.
Using nearly $500,000, Timberline was renovated adding a heated swimming pool, chairlifts and Sno-Cats to help transport visitors around Mt. Hood. According to the Timberline Lodge’s website, it took five years before the lodge became profitable.
After an influx of visitors began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, funds were received from the government to expand further building a new day lodge and also completing the lodge’s east wing, which was in the building’s original wing but was never completed up till that point.
On December 22, 1977, the U.S. Department of the Interior declared the lodge a historic landmark and it has since become one of Oregon’s most visited landmarks, with nearly 2 million people visiting each year.
Timberline has continued to grow and change over the years, including the addition of the Timberline Bike Park, which opened in 2019 and offered mountain bike trails, and improved chair lifts with improvements in technology.
In 2021, Timberline was given permission to combine the land between Summit Pass and TImberline, giving the ski resort the longest vertical terrain in the United States at 4,540 feet.
On April 18, 2024, the lodge was evacuated due to a fire that began in the attic.
The cause of that fire is still being investigated.
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