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March 3, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Rumford rescues 1950 FIS championships

by Jeff Leich/

The 1950 International Ski Federation (FIS) World Championships were the first to be held in the United States, with Alpine events in Aspen, Colo., and Nordic slated for Lake Placid, N.Y., but changed at the last minute to Rumford, Maine.

These were the first international ski events to be held in the United States since the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, an event that left European attendees less than impressed. American organizers wanted to erase the memory of 1932 and convince the continental ski powers that America had arrived as their peer. As it happened, the Aspen portion fulfilled all hopes in that regard, but it was much closer in the East.

Vermont and New Hampshire had significant development of downhill ski areas in the 1930s and 1940s. But in Maine, with the exception of Pleasant Mountain in Bridgton, skiing was largely the traditional, Nordic strain, practiced by Scandinavian settlers associated with the paper industry.

In part, this was a result of land ownership patterns in Maine, where large tracts of woodland and mountain terrain were in private hands. In the other two northern New England states, massive acreages of state and federal land existed that were put to use for recreational purposes such as skiing in the 1930s and 1940s, when political sentiment supported such use. Without the expanses of public lands in Maine, this did not occur in those decades.

It may have been due in part to a much smaller population in the cities whose natural hinterland was Maine. Vermont was the natural destination up north from New York, as New Hampshire was for Boston. Those two cities had far greater populations, and therefore greater numbers of skiers, than the Maine coastal cities, whose residents might be expected to use ski facilities in their state.

Medium-sized Maine cities such as Auburn and Rumford were centers of Nordic skiing in the 1920s and 1930s. Even as downhill skiing crept into these communities with the construction of local tows, the ski jumping and cross country disciplines remained strong past the time they had withered in other locales. Skiing in Rumford was organized under the auspices of the Rumford Outing Club before World War II. That club disbanded and was replaced by the Chisholm Skiing and Outing Club in 1923. The club shortly constructed a 60-meter jump in 1926, the largest ski jump in the East, a distinction that held until Lake Placid hosted the 1932 Winter Olympics. In addition to jumping, a network of cross-country trails was built.

A T-Bar tow was built on Spruce Street in 1938, constructed by club stalwart Reidar Christiansen. It operated into the Second World War, and was moved to Andover, Maine, in 1946. More recently, Black Mountain in Rumford still serves Alpine skiers in the area.

Rumford demonstrated the strength of its Nordic tradition quite conclusively in 1950, when it served as the last-minute host of the FIS championship cross country races. In the East, the winters of 1949 and 1950 were warmer than many skiers could recall, with a consequent lack of snow cover, and this fact threatened the FIS cross country at Lake Placid with cancellation, while jumping would have to take place there on crushed ice.

The situation was dire enough that a team was sent to scout alternative locations for the cross country event. In spite of a late snowfall in Lake Placid, the group chose Rumford, where snow was relatively abundant, after looking over North Conway and Jackson in New Hampshire. The decision to move the cross country events to Rumford came on Jan. 31, and the first race was held on Feb. 3. In the intervening 56 hours, hurried arrangements for the 100 athletes and 400 others were made, and assistance flowed in from near and far.

On discovering that the 18-kilometer course was a bit too short, FIS representatives arranged for the Chisholm Ski Club to lengthen it by introducing enough curves to add the needed 1,300 feet. The key Rumford figures in the effort to prepare for the events were Wendall “Chummy” Broomhall, a 10th Mountain Division veteran, president of the Chisholm Ski Club, cross country coach and competitor, and Phil Marx, chairman of the citizens committee that handled logistics and finances for the event. The Rumford organizers had two days to “rig timing devices, string wire, brush out trails, build a power line to the race site, move a building through town to be set up as a timer’s shack, pack the courses, locate interpreters, find beds and food for the racers, and dig up the money to pay for the whole works,” in the words of Eastern Skier.

With less than three days’ notice, the Rumford community and many others from USEASA and Maine state government put forth an almost superhuman effort to prepare for the international event, preparations that normally consumed three months or more. The events went off with near-perfection, and Scandinavian racers and officials, in contrast to their disregard for the more dubious conditions in Lake Placid, praised both the organization and the venue. The three days of intense preparation at Rumford salvaged the Nordic events, and perhaps America’s reputation as a new ski nation on the world stage.

Jeff Leich is the executive director of the New England Ski Museum in Franconia, N.H.