Smugglers' Notch Resort: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:35, 19 July 2006

Revision as of 21:40, 6 August 2006

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Smuggler's Notch was founded 1956, by a group of Vermont skiers. The first lifts were two pomas (or platter lifts) on Sterling mountain.

Smuggler's Notch never made any money in the first seven years of it'sits exsistence, until it was discovered by Tom Watson, Jr., who was the Chairman of IBM at that time. The site of the Village today was an open field and logging station Watson envisioned a village patterned after those found in Europe. Soon, he developed the other mountains, Morse and Madonna. Never to be outdone Watson placed the bottom of the Madonna I chairlift several feet below the lodge to get the prize of owning the world's longest bottom-drive chairlift at the time.

After this was done, Watson started on the Village at Morse that he had envisioned. He hired Stanley Snider of Stanmar, a Massachusetts-based developer and Martha's Vineyard resort owner, to create that village. After a heart attack, Watson began to divest in his pet projects and sold Smuggs to Snider and Stanmar, who operated the resort for years. They hired AT&T's Bill Stritzler, who owned a home at Smuggs, as the Managing Director of the resort. When Snider retired, he sold the resort to Stritzler.