Marv Sundstrom: There's a stretch of years here, roughly 1962 to 1981, where the town I grew up in became a different town. Not overnight. But if you sat down and did the math, it did.

Dana Reyes: I got here at the tail end of that stretch. I was a kid. My parent took a job on the mountain. So everything Marv is about to describe — I only know the after.

Theo Ames: And I came for the mountain, like a lot of people. So I want to actually understand what happened in those years. Starting with — the ski area didn't even open when it was supposed to, right?

Marv Sundstrom: Right. Storm Mountain. James Temple was the one pushing to develop it as a resort ski mountain. They were aiming for the 1961-62 season. It didn't happen. A lift manufacturer couldn't complete the order for a double chairlift.

Dana Reyes: So the whole thing hinges on one piece of hardware not showing up. That's a good reminder that these origin stories are often just logistics.

Theo Ames: What happened in the meantime?

Marv Sundstrom: In November of '62 they put up an A-frame — the Storm Hut. Room for about 250 skiers to warm up. Snack bar upstairs. Ski shop downstairs, run by Skeeter and Buddy Werner.

Dana Reyes: That name matters. Hold onto it.

Marv Sundstrom: The area officially opened January 12th, 1963. Double chairlift, A-frame warming house. That's Storm Mountain, as a functioning ski area.

Theo Ames: Okay, so — Storm Mountain. Which is not what we call it now. When does the name change?

Dana Reyes: That's where Buddy Werner comes back in. Hometown skier. Olympian. And on April 12th, 1964, he was killed in an avalanche in Switzerland.

Marv Sundstrom: He was young. He was ours, in the way small towns mean that. And on February 15th, 1965, the mountain was renamed Mount Werner.

Theo Ames: So less than a year after he dies, the mountain has his name on it.

Marv Sundstrom: Yes.

Dana Reyes: And this is where the episode gets uncomfortable, and I think it should. Because four years after that — 1969 — the mountain gets sold.

Theo Ames: Sold to who?

Dana Reyes: LTV Recreational Development Inc. Eight million dollars for the ski area. And then they announced a ten million dollar development at the base.

Marv Sundstrom: That's a conglomerate. That's not a local operation anymore.

Theo Ames: So the town renames its mountain after a young man it lost, and then four years later sells that mountain to a conglomerate.

Marv Sundstrom: Both of those things are true. I'm not going to sit here and turn it into a lesson. I don't think it becomes one.

Dana Reyes: I don't either. But I'm also not going to pretend it isn't strange to say out loud.

Theo Ames: Can I ask the plain question? Who was already living here when all this money showed up?

Marv Sundstrom: Ranchers. Families that had been in the valley for generations, mine included. A working town.

Theo Ames: And before that — I don't want to skip over it — this valley wasn't empty before Euro-American settlement either. The Yampa was Ute country. That's its own history and we've talked about it in other episodes, but it doesn't stop being true just because we're on the 1960s now.

Dana Reyes: Right. The land keeps changing hands, and each round of change has people who benefit and people who leave. This episode is one round of that.

Marv Sundstrom: I don't know everything about who left in the seventies. I know some ranch families sold. I know some stayed. I'd rather say I don't know than make it neater than it was.

Theo Ames: Let's talk about the scale of it. Because I've seen the number and I don't think I actually understand it.

Dana Reyes: Between 1970 and 1980, Routt County's population grew at about seven-point-three-five percent a year.

Theo Ames: A year.

Marv Sundstrom: Compounding. At that rate you roughly double the place in a decade.

Theo Ames: Double.

Dana Reyes: Sit with that. Whatever Steamboat was in 1970 — the number of people, the number of houses, the number of cars on the road — roughly twice that by 1980.

Marv Sundstrom: And I was here for it. And I still couldn't tell you the exact moment it stopped feeling like the town I grew up in. It's not one moment.

Dana Reyes: I got here right at the end of that decade. So the Steamboat I met was already the doubled one. That's just — that's my baseline.

Theo Ames: That's wild to think about. Your normal is his after.

Dana Reyes: Yeah. And somebody who moved here in 2015 thinks my Steamboat is the old one. It keeps going.

Marv Sundstrom: That's the part I keep coming back to. Every version of this town thinks it caught the last real one.

Theo Ames: So where does that leave us at the end of this stretch — 1981?

Marv Sundstrom: A mountain with a young man's name on it. Owned by a conglomerate. A base area built out with ten million dollars of development. And a county with roughly twice the people it had at the start of the decade.

Dana Reyes: And a lot of questions about who that all worked out for. Which we're not going to answer tonight, because I don't think the evidence lets us.

Theo Ames: I appreciate that you two won't just tie it in a bow.

Marv Sundstrom: There's no bow. There's a mountain, and it changed its name, and it changed hands, and the town changed with it. That's the episode.

Dana Reyes: I'm Dana Reyes.

Marv Sundstrom: I'm Marv Sundstrom.

Theo Ames: And I'm Theo Ames. Thanks for coming back in the boat with us.