Riblet Tramway Company
The Riblet Tramway Company’s legacy didn’t start on the ski slopes—it began in the backwoods mining towns of 1890s interior British Columbia. With a USFS contract and the construction of their first chair on Mt. Hood, OR in 1939, they became the world’s first chairlift company; with 500 lifts from Alta to Australia within a few decades, they became the largest in the world. While the founder’s legacy has slipped away into history and their chairlifts have been pushed into obsolescence by high-speed detachables, the Riblet Tramway Company remains indelibly tied to the birth of American ski culture.
Words Sakeus Bankson
It’s 1903 in Sandon, BC, and Milton Parent, a journalist from the Ferguson Eagle, is loading onto what is possibly the first chairlift in recorded history. “The start is the only time one thinks of possible danger, when the car shoots off from the lower terminal across a span of 1,800 feet to the first tower,” he says of the ride. The chairlift is in no way intended for skiing—it is a modified ore bucket for a nearby mine—but the rush that Milton describes is one that will become a shared experience for millions of skiers across history and around the world.
The lift is the creation of Byron Christian Riblet, the genius behind Riblet Tramway Company, the world’s first chairlift manufacturer. Riblet’s legacy has for the most part slipped away into the mists of history, and his chairlifts pushed into obsolescence by high-speed detachables. Yet in the 100-plus years since Parent’s ride, the Riblet Tramway Company would prove essential to the birth of American ski culture…