Keystone Resort is a ski resort located in Keystone, Colorado, United States. Keystone is a beautiful assortment of over 3000 acres of skiable terrain across 3 adjacent mountains. Since 1997, the resort has been owned and operated by Vail Resorts.
They're famous for their large ice rink, night skiing, family-friendly slopes and five-star restaurants, and these things together make it a favorite of the front range. Besides skiing, Keystone offers an array of winter and summer activities, as well as luxury spa services and world class dining. Today, Keystone ranks as one of the largest ski areas in Colorado, offering terrain for all levels of riders.
The area around the resort was originally used by the Ute and Arapaho during summer, but was overtaken by miners in search of precious metal. Keystone was founded explicitly for the ski resort in 1970, making it comfortable and convenient.
The history of Keystone is an illustrious one, dating back to 1941, when the founders purchased the Black Ranch along the Snake River, the site of the current Ski Tip Ranch. Finally opening in 1970 after a multiple decade-long planning and visualization period carried out by the resort's passionate founder, Max Dercum, Keystone officially opened on November 21, 1970.
The ski area opened in 1970, with 75,000 first-year visitors and $5 lift tickets.
Read also: Keystone Skates: A Historical Overview
The Keystone logo pin is a great way to dress up your sport coat or cowboy hat.
Keystone, Colorado Ski Area Pin
The Visionaries Behind Keystone
Few people would believe that one of the most popular ski resorts in the United States emerged out of America’s heartland: Iowa. From the Great Plains, where corn is usually the tallest silhouette against the skyline, came the financial backbone of Keystone Resort.
Keystone began as a vision that Max Dercum had fostered for more than 20 years and that first took shape one snowy Christmas evening in 1968 in a snug cabin near the Snake River. Max had skied every inch of the mountain and surrounding terrain until he had it memorized. With his dream of a ski area close to his heart, he worked diligently on his plans, creating a prospectus, hand-sketching maps and models he hoped would help sell the concept.
In the 1940s, Max Dercum left his job as a forestry professor and ski racing coach at Penn State University to work for the Forest Service as a forester and fire spotter in Colorado. He and his wife Edna first lived in Georgetown before settling on a ranch outside the village of Keystone.
Read also: Keystone Programs
A Midwesterner, Bill had learned to ski on rope tows in Wisconsin in what he describes to be “the coldest weather in the entire world.” Bill graduated from the University of Iowa, where he was an All-American football and basketball player. He met his wife Jane, a freshman beauty queen, on campus in Iowa City after returning from World War II as a B-24 lead navigator in the Air Corps.
Bill and Jane began their annual skiing visits to Colorado in 1952 and fell in love with Summit County. They stayed at the Ski Tip Lodge or the Alhambra cabin, located a half-mile east of Ski Tip. They originally purchased Alhambra from Max and Edna Dercum, who had lived there while building Ski Tip.
Bill and Jane became friends with the Dercums. Subsequently, the Bergmans purchased the Alhambra, and it became the official office of Keystone Resort. Bill returned to Iowa from his Colorado ski vacation with a special excitement.
“We looked to see what Vail had done when they got started and decided we needed to raise $25,000 per individual investor,” Bill said. He quickly gathered a group of his clients and spread the plans before them. They responded with enthusiastic nods of yes. With little convincing, he also recruited 15 of the 20 friends he skied with during his “stag years” to become members of Keystone’s ambassador corps.
All the money was raised within Iowa, with a few exceptions of “knowledgables,” such as the Dercums, which simplified the often-complex process of raising funds. The investors were all granted life-time transferable ski passes as well as one-third of an acre of land for development.
Read also: Wolf Ridge Lodging & Activities
“Our thought was to raise $800,000 to handle the planning for the first year, then initiate a public stock issue,” Bergman recalled. Entering stage left was another one of Bill’s clients: the Ralston Purina Co. of St. “They had the money and were looking for diversification,” Bill said.
Meanwhile, Bill, as president of Keystone, was try to build the ski area from his Cedar Rapids law office. He hired Vail’s general manager Clay Simon to run the day-to-day operations. In shaping the image of Colorado’s newest ski area, Bill described how they wanted to preserve the mining look with a railroad feel, as Vail had adopted the Swiss chalet style.
Keystone adapted its name from the old Pennsylvania miners, but people didn’t seem wild about it at first. They even held a name contest to rename it, but no one submitted anything better.
In the early days, Jane did all the marketing herself, for no salary, by delivering brochures in her car.
Bill retired from his law practice Dec. 22, 1998, and he and Jane made their mountain getaway in Keystone a permanent residence. They skied as often as possible now that they had the mountain in their backyard.
Bill Bergman is in his mid-90s and still lives and golfs in Summit County.
Expansion and Development
Since that time, Keystone has undergone steady expansion. In 1972, the resort was one of the first in Colorado to install a snowmaking system. In 1974, Ralston Purina acquired the resort and began a massive capital expansion plan.
The Keystone Ranch Golf Course opened for play in 1980. The ski mountain installed its first gondola, and added new chairs and runs, in 1984. The second ski mountain, North Peak, opened up 12 new runs with the installation of the second gondola, and two new lifts.
A third ski mountain was added in 1990, with the opening of the Outback. North Peak opened for skiing in 1984. Two trails, Diamond Back and Mozart, allow access to North Peak from Dercum Mountain. North Peak initially featured seven trails, serviced by two Lift Engineering triple chairlifts.
Santiago serviced the North Peak pod, while Teller, now known as Ruby Express, provided egress back to Dercum Mountain. As part of the expansion, a second base area was opened at River Run, with a gondola running all the way to the Summit House.
In 1990, Keystone entered the detachable industry as Doppelmayr constructed two high speed quads to replace aging lifts on Dercum Mountain. The Peru Express lift replaced a Heron Poma double, providing access from the Mountain House base area to the Packsaddle Bowl and the west side of the mountain.
In 1991, Keystone opened an expansion into the Outback, located beyond North Peak. Doppelmayr constructed three new lifts to service the expansion. A two-way gondola, known as the Outpost Gondola, was built from the summit of Dercum Mountain over to North Peak.
In 1997, the Erickson triple chairlift on Dercum Mountain was removed and replaced with a new Doppelmayr high speed quad, named the Summit Express, running parallel to the River Run Gondola for its entire length.
In 2000, the original Ruby (then Teller) lift was removed and replaced with a high speed six pack. In 2008, the River Run Gondola, nearing 22 years of continuous service, was retired and replaced with a new gondola.
Doppelmayr constructed the replacement River Run Gondola, which had its base area terminal moved from adjacent to the Summit Express to a new location across the river, closer to the main Keystone Village, River Run Village. For the 2017 season, Keystone built their second high speed six pack, bringing in Leitner-Poma to replace the Montezuma Express lift.
In 2021, Keystone completed the upgrade of the Peru Express lift, replacing it with a high speed 6-passenger chair.
Development continued under Vail Resorts, with the opening of the second championship golf course, the River Course, and the establishment of the Cross Country Center for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. Bowl skiing was also expanded with cat service to the North and South Bowls.
Table: Keystone Lift Information
| Lift Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Main lift out of River Run Village | Travels to Dercum summit. |
| Outpost Gondola | Transfer lift that travels between North Peak and Dercum Mountain summits. |
| Terrain park lift | Dedicated terrain park lift that was shortened in 1976. |
Vail Resorts and Beyond
And then, in 1997, Keystone merged with Breckenridge, Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts to form Vail Resorts, the largest resort company in the United States. In 1996, after less than one year of ownership, Vail Resorts put A-Basin on the market.
Since 1997, the resort has been owned and operated by Vail Resorts. It consists of three mountains (Dercum Mountain, North Peak, and the Outback) and five Bowls (Independence, Erickson, Bergman, and North and South Bowls).
In honor of the founders, Keystone Mountain was renamed to Dercum Mountain in 2003. Also, Bill Bergman was the first president of the Keystone Resort Corp, playing a large hand in developing the resort. "Little Bowl" was renamed in 2004 as "Bergman Bowl" in his honor.