In the next few weeks, guns will cease to fire at the historic Sun Valley Gun Club. Plans by Sun Valley Resort to develop a new 9-hole golf course and housing require closure and relocation of the facility.
"The plan is to continue to have a gun club facility at the Sun Valley Resort. We don't feel like we can abandon the Gun Club. It is part of our history," said Sun Valley Co. spokesman Jack Sibbach.
Activity at the historic facility—located northeast of Sun Valley Village along Trail Creek Road—will continue until late July or early August. A specific closure date for the summer season has not been set but will coincide with excavation work for the Gun Club Nine, the resort's new golf course.
Recent decisions indicate that the resort's trap-shooting activities will continue at a new location next year.
"We plan on reopening a gun club facility somewhere near Trail Creek Cabin next spring," Sibbach said.
Questions arose over the Gun Club's future in May during the Sun Valley City Council's review of the golf course project. During city meetings, Sun Valley Co. General Manager Wally Huffman told the City Council that future Gun Club activities might not be financially feasibility.
Sibbach agreed.
"It's not a big money maker, but it is part of the history. It is part of what brings people here," he said.
Gun Club activity has entertained high-profile guests like Ernest Hemingway, Harry Truman, Gary Cooper and Ann Sothern.
Trap shooting attracted visitors even before Sun Valley Resort had a formal gun club. During Sun Valley's formative years, the Union Pacific Railroad-owned resort hosted the Fourth of July Sun Valley handicap trap shoot. Shoots took place at 14 trap stations located on the south side of Trail Creek, near what is now the Fairway Road side of the resort. A sizable crowd gathered at a headquarters tent, rather than a clubhouse.
Around 1950, Sun Valley moved cabins off Proctor and Dollar mountains, the nearby ski hills, to the trap range. The cabins were joined to make the now-historic clubhouse.
"Carpenters can do almost everything if they have go a good painter around to cover up their mistakes. They put it together and the painters covered up the sections," said Ben Hurtig in an oral interview on file at The Community Library in Ketchum. Hurtig operated the Gun Club for more than 20 years. He died in January 2006.
Hurtig was in charge of the club when Bill Janss bought Sun Valley Resort. The new owner had a vision to make Sun Valley a year-round resort, and he invested in the Gun Club.
In the spring of 1964, Janss moved the facility to its present location on Trail Creek Road.
The historic mountain cabin clubhouse was split and moved to the present Trail Creek location. The seams can still be seen from the outside of the building. The trap houses and skeet houses came along as well.
Now, more than 40 years later, the gun club clubhouse is about to be moved again.
Sibbach said the company will move the facility to the vicinity of Trail Creek Cabin, though not on the cabin grounds. An exact location has not been determined and must be approved by the city of Sun Valley. No determination has been made as to how the historic clubhouse building will be used.
The change comes to make way for new development that is part of Sun Valley's long-term master plan for its vast acreage.
Sun Valley Co.'s immediate plans call for a 9-hole golf course starting on the west side of Trail Creek Road and climbing onto the Gun Club site's ridgelines before descending back toward the road. A master plan of the area also calls for low- to medium-density housing.
The golf course is scheduled to open in the spring of 2008.
Trap shooters converge at the old Sun Valley Gun Club in May 1956. The historic facility will close this summer and reopen at a new site to make way for development. Photos courtesy of The Community Library
