How Skiing Mogul Everett Kircher Built An Empire; Let It Snow: His tenacity, innovation and drive to create a man-made wonder helped plow new inroads to the resort world.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(BEST OF LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: MARILYN ALVA

Skiing in the 1940s wasn't widespread in the U.S., and Michigan was anything but a ski mecca.

The best Michigan had to offer was a 250-foot vertical course on a hill in Gaylord. But young Everett Kircher of Detroit, a car dealer and avid skier, was determined to find a steeper hill -- a real mountain -- so that he and other Michigan skiers wouldn't have to travel to Sun Valley, Idaho; Stowe, Vt.; or Mount Tremblant in Canada.

Most of all, he wanted Michigan to have its own ski resort, one that would popularize skiing for the public rather than just for the elite--the rich and famous celebrities who frequented places like Sun Valley.

With two ski buddies, Kircher found a 1,150-foot ridge outside the crossroads town of Boyne Falls in the lower peninsula of northwest Michigan. It had a 500-foot vertical drop, about double any other ski area in the state. But the slope was still little more than a hill. The owner of the property thought the idea of a ski resort there was so ludicrous that he sold them the land for next to nothing -- $1.

It might have been a hill, but starting in 1949 Kircher made it into a mountain--a Swiss Alps-style mountain ski resort that he named Boyne Mountain.

Although his earlier partners backed off, Kircher didn't stop there. He bought and improved another ski resort several miles to the north, Boyne Highlands Resort, followed by Bay Harbor Golf Club on Lake Michigan, Big Sky in Montana and others in the Rockies and Pacific Northwest.