History of The Beav
Beaver Mountain, also affectionately known as The Beav, has been the ski resort for Cache Valley citizens since 1936.
It was established by Harold Seeholzer, who first stuck a rope tow powered by an old car motor in the ground in hopes of creating a place that he and the few other Cache Valley skiers at the time had a place to call their own.
Now, more than 70 years later, Ted Seeholzer, Harold’s son and current manager of Beaver Mountain, said The Beav is the one of the last family-run ski resorts still functioning in the U.S. today.
But even though most students know that The Beav is the optimal place for snowboarding and skiing, very few know anything about the mountain’s long history.
“The first group of people who skied The Beav in 1936 had to walk in from the road because there was no road at that time. They were there for two years when people started saying they didn’t want to walk in there anymore, so they moved the ski area up to the Sinks, an area roughly a mile and a half into Logan Canyon,” Ted said.
The Sinks stayed the base of operations until 1947 when the decision was made by Harold to move back to the original site at Beaver Mountain. The county commissioner at the time was also in favor of building a newer ski resort and helped fund the construction of a road into Beaver. This road, along with the construction of Canyon Road, made getting up to the mountain much easier.
With the decision to make Beaver Mountain a fully functional ski area, Harold and his family dedicated themselves to enhancing every aspect of the resort. They added in newer, better lifts and built cabins and lodges for the ticket office and dinning area.
Through all of this, Harold was the head of operations for Beaver Mountain; however, roughly 14 years after the mountain’s official opening, Harold decided to bring his children into the business as more than just helpers.
“In 1961, Harold and Luella Seeholzer called their family together and formed a corporation, with them at the head. The corporation included two sons, Loyal and Ted, and two daughters, Dixie and Nancy,” states The Beav’s Web site.
This was the format of ownership of the business until 1968 when Harold died of cancer.
After the death of his father, Ted stepped up as general manager of Beaver Mountain. His siblings and mother continued to work full time, Ted said.
This continued for many years until 1997 when Ted’s siblings, not wanting to put any more money into the business, were bought out by Ted, making him and his wife, Marge, the sole owners of the business.
“We’re pretty proud of what we’ve been able to do since we bought Ted’s siblings out. We’ve kind of been at a stand still for several years because they didn’t want to put any money into it, and (with a business like this) you have got to keep it up and offer a few new things,” said Marge, who also runs the Beaver Mountain store in Logan.
Although the siblings were bought out, however, they still contribute time and labor to Beaver Mountain, along with many other family members.
However, in the 11 years Ted and Marge have been running things at Beaver Mountain, they have made many large improvements, Marge said.
Those improvements include building two new lifts and the construction of a large maintenance building. They have also just reached the home stretch of a major expansion on the lodge, a $400,000 project.
But they don’t plan on stopping there. Marge said there is always a long to-do list and they will continue to bring in bigger and better things.
“Our next major project is tearing down the ticket office, which is a little log cabin that was built around 1946 and houses both the ticket office and ski school, and building a much larger building, at least three floors, which will accommodate everything,” she said.
Marge said they also do as much as they can to cater to the student population. Four days a week, the USU snowboarding and skiing classes are held on their slopes. In addition, a season pass for a student is only $305, in comparison to an adult pass which is $510.
Ted said the survival of Beaver Mountain depends greatly on local business. Unlike other resorts in Utah, The Beav is more of a local treasure than an exotic destination, which serves those in the Cache Valley community just fine.
“Those places have a lot of visitors who are coming in for vacation, we see very little of that. Probably 1 percent of our people are here from somewhere else. The majority of our customers come from the Cache Valley, Southern Idaho, Western Montana areas,” Ted said.
But this doesn’t bother the family run business owners because they’re in it for the love of providing a good place to ski at a very good price.
“We like it but it’s a lot of work. We get a lot of satisfaction out of it. We’ll never get rich running a ski area this size but we make a living,” Ted said.
–greg.boyles@aggiemail.usu.edu