[2] Sugar Bowl was founded by Hannes Schroll and a group of individual investors and is one of the few remaining privately owned resorts in the Lake Tahoe area.These heavy snow storms and blizzards during the winters often made even train service difficult over the years through the pass, which for a period of time was known as the Overland Route.[16][17][18] Historian Charles F. McGlashan believed the area's economy would greatly benefit by hosting a winter carnival, and in 1894 he built the first hand-crafted Ice Palace to draw in tourists from the passenger trains.This road was later upgraded in 1926 to U.S. Route 40, although snow plowing operations by the state of California didn't start until 1932, making travel to the area by car difficult in the winter.During the early 1930s, before Sugar Bowl installed the first chair lift, skiers who wanted to ski the Donner Pass mountain peaks, like Mt.Schroll then had to borrow the funding to buy the property from Hamilton McCaughey, a local realtor, and ice-skating champion George Stiles.[19] Shortly after, Schroll began seeking other investors to help build a Slope side Tyrolean style village and ski resort modeled after those in his hometown of Kitzbühel, Austria.[1][31] The Southern Pacific Railroad agreed to build a facility adjacent to the Norden telegraph office to accommodate 600 people, to support the opening of Sugar Bowl.Schroll also used his connections from Hollywood to convince Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce a film called "Snowbirds" during November 1938, before Sugar Bowl opened to the public.[19][35] Moore Dry Dock Company was hired to install the 13 towers in Howard's design to span the 1,000 vertical feet up to the top of Mt.[19] Miners were brought in from Nevada City and used shovels, picks, and sometimes dynamite to clear away trees and dig footings for the towers by hand.Prior to the international World Cup ski competition, the Silver Belt race was considered one of the most challenging of that era and often attracted the top European and American skiers.Other notable winners included Alf Engen, Tom Corcoran, Buddy Werner, Willy Favre, Jean Saubert, Barbara Cochran, Jack Reddish, Penny Pitou, Anne Heggtveit, Dick Buek, Jill Kinmont, Andrea Mead Lawrence, Gordon Wren and Cynthia Nelson, who won the last event in 1975.[19] Because Sugar Bowl had the first chair lift in the Sierras with full lodge accommodations, the resort quickly became a popular skiing destination for many notable guests and Hollywood personalities.[19][30][36] Guests included King Vidor, Robert Stack, Norma Shearer, Margaret Sullavan, Jean Arthur, James Bryant Conant, Doris Duke, Claudette Colbert, Lowell Thomas, Leland Hayward, Errol Flynn, Sterling Hayden, and Marilyn Monroe.Leigh's father, Fred Morrison, was a front desk clerk and had his daughter's photo visible when the actress checked in at the lodge.The movie Two-Faced Woman, starring [19][23] Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Roland Young, and Ruth Gordon, was filmed at Sugar Bowl in the spring of 1941.Based on the original design plans of Sugar Bowl, Jerome Hill determined that a gondola would be necessary to move people better into the ski area.[1] It brings guests from a parking lot on the north side of the railroad line, crosses over the tracks just past the west portal of Tunnel No.
The Sugar Bowl Gondola that takes Guest to the Lodge & Ski area