The image of today’s Colorado ski scene is one of extravagance, of designer shopping and fine dining at the base of immaculate, groomed slopes. The scene of yesterday was much different. Here we glide through the history of the industry that helped define the state:

1860s: Colorado’s first “ski bum” starts to make a name for himself. As mining camps sprout and boom across the mountains, Father John Dyer is seen preaching by snowshoes and skis. It’s a practical mode of travel over the snowy ranges before the idea for recreation takes off.

1911: In northwest Colorado, Hot Sulphur Springs holds a winter carnival that makes skiing fun and includes jumping competitions. A Norwegian immigrant named Carl Howelsen takes notice.

1914: Howelsen forms Howelsen Hill in Steamboat Springs, marking the start of what would be North America’s longest-continuing ski area.

1939: While locals had been skiing the slopes high beyond Salida for years, they formalize a destination with the addition of a car engine-powered rope tow — a kind of rig also recently built at Pikes Peak, Loveland Basin and Wolf Creek Pass. The ski area is called Monarch Mountain.

1940: The city and county of Denver welcome Denverites and tourists to Winter Park, the state’s first big ski area.

1942: During World War II, the Army establishes the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale near Leadville, where men train for duty in Europe requiring ski travel. Some of these men would go on to be instrumental in building the industry as we know it. Within this decade, they set up Ski Cooper back at the old camp as well as Aspen Mountain and Arapahoe Basin.

1948: Billy Mahoney and other enthusiasts around Telluride put together a rope tow. It’s Mahoney’s first move in eventually seeing a ski area come to life.

1955: Stockholders buy Loveland Ski Tow Inc. and a general manager is named: 10th Mountain Division veteran Pete Seibert.

1957: Seibert and local rancher Earl Eaton purchase 500 acres and continue a dream for a ski area like no other, to be called Vail.

1961: Peak 8 Ski Area, later Breckenridge Resort, opens, while the year also sees an impressive Doppelmayr T-bar run up Mount Crested Butte.

1962: Colorado’s first gondola ferries the first skiers of Vail Mountain.

1963: With a chairlift and a promise for fluffy, sparkly powder, Storm Mountain in Steamboat Springs opens, later to become Steamboat Resort. The project took off the previous decade, headed by a team that included local Buddy Werner, the first American man to win a major downhill race in Europe.

1967: Eyes were on Aspen the previous decade as Buttermilk and Highlands took shape, but now the first chairlift is loaded at a resort proclaimed to rival Vail and any other across the world: Snowmass.

1970: Long after co-founding A-Basin in the ‘40s, Max Dercum finally realizes another ski area he long envisioned down the road as Keystone opens. Elsewhere in Summit County, plans are coming along for Copper Mountain, which debuts in 1972.

1972: Colorado wins the bid to host the Winter Olympics, but controversy boils over with citizens concerned about unchecked growth and development in the mountains. The bid is rejected a year before the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel opens, further spurring traffic on Interstate 70 west of Denver.

1980: A grand destination opens off I-70: Beaver Creek, which was initially intended to host the Olympics.

1981: Ski Cooper hosts a snowboarding competition thought to be the first of its kind. If they weren’t already, resorts everywhere begin to accept the fact snowboards are here to stay.

1987: The decade sees ramped-up corporate maneuvering. A merger this year adds Breckenridge and Keystone to Vail Resorts, cementing the company’s dominance ahead of acquiring Beaver Creek and other resorts around the world.