Looking Into the Past, Present, & Future of Timberline Lodge with Its President Jeff Kohnstamm

We'll just start off with, you know, I, I'm blown away.

The research that I've done into to Timberline, I had no idea the history.

So Timberline's unlike any other ski resort in the country because of how it was born.

Built during the Depression under the Works Progress Administration, essentially the New Deal with FDR.

500 plus workers put it up in about 18 months, which seems ridiculous.

And I'm just curious, how and why did that happen?

Well, it's, it's a great question, and I think you're absolutely right.

The origins of Timberline are, are really cool.

And you know, you can think about the Depression, and the whole idea with the Works Progress Administration was, as you said, Roosevelt's New Deal.

The idea was to put people to work.

Mm-hmm.

So there were a bunch of infrastructure, mostly infrastructure projects around the country.

It was dams, roads, schools, that sort of thing, bridges, that the WPA worked on.

In our area, the Bonneville Dam was happening at the same time as Timberline Lodge.

Hmm.

But there were some influential people in Portland who, uh, had always dreamed of a ski lodge on Mount Hood.

These businessmen convinced somehow the government that one of their projects to put people to work should be a ski lodge.

And of course, the WPA, the government didn't have a bucket of money for a ski lodge.

But what was pretty well-funded, and is very cool, and is a huge aspect of Timberline is the Federal Arts budget.

So one of the core missions of the Timberline project was to make sure that craftspeople of the time were inspiring younger people.

So they used talented craftspeople to teach and have apprentices to do things like blacksmithing or wood carving or textile work with fabrics or even painting and glasswork.

And so Timberline reeks of art because the budget came from art.

And that, you know, that's part of the culture of Timberline.

And people who aren't skiers come up and look at it just for the art until they realize it's a ski lodge.

But at its core, at its, at its beginning, it's a ski lodge.