A brief history of federal lift ticket regulation

A brief history of federal lift ticket regulation Remembering a time when the US Forest Service fought price gouging on our publicly owned ski slopes Zak Podmore Jan 15, 2026 Aspen Highlands in 1974. Ron Hoffman/Wikimedia. When the Aspen Skiing Company wanted to raise its lift ticket prices from $10 to $12 in 1975, it had to ask the US Forest Service for permission. When Aspen residents wanted to fight the proposed price increase, they wrote letters to their local forest supervisor. That’s the way ski business was done half a century ago: through a federal intermediary. Most ski resorts in the western United States operate under Forest Service permits, and in the 1970s, politicians, national forest employees, skiers, and ski resort owners all recognized that the agency had a mandate to regulate the prices charged by private companies on public land. “These guys [ski company managers] would come in with their hat in their hand, literally, and be as polite as possible and say, ‘Can we raise our ticket price fifty cents or a dollar,’” recalled Erik Martin, a ski resort specialist in the 1970s for White River National Forest, which manages land used by the four Aspen-Snowmass area resorts. At the time, ski areas had to renew a required operating permit with the Forest Service annually, and federal employees like Martin understood that stopping unreasonable rate hikes was part of the job. “We controlled everything. They were our ski areas,” Martin told historian Michael Childers f…