Colorado
Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame

Marjorie Perry 1882-1969
 
Inducted into the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame 1988
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Marjorie was born in 1882 in Chicago, moving to Denver with her family in 1886. She was a charter member of the Colorado Mountain Club and often participated in their winter outings to Fern and Grand Lake. On one trip to Grand Lake, Marjorie ski-jored behind the mail sleigh that was transporting her from Granby to the mining town.

While at a railroad stop at Hot Sulphur Springs in 1913, Marjorie was introduced to Carl Howelsen, a Norwegian traveling with a group of countrymen giving ski jumping exhibitions. She persuaded him to move on to Steamboat Springs, where hills were steeper and higher. He was to settle there and help organize the first Steamboat Winter Carnival in 1914. Marjorie attended every carnival from then until her death, except one in 1935. She often hosted and skied with Scandinavian ski jumpers of the early days, including Anders Haugen, who, along with Howelsen, later was to become a Colorado Ski Hall of Fame member.

Skiing was Marjorie's favorite pastime as a sport at a time when most Coloradoans thought of it as merely a mode of transportation. She was a friend and companion to the itinerant Scandinavian ski jumpers traveling the West at the time and often helped transport them to Steamboat Springs for the Carnival. Once, when stranded on a snowbound train on Rollins Pass, she skied down the tracks, flare in hand, to lead the snowplow train to the rescue.

Marjorie skied on her 25-year-old, eight-foot-long, wooden Cross-country skis until 1968, when she finally put them away.


 


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