In 1907, tens of thousands of spectators bought tickets to the Barnum & Bailey Circus in order to see the sensational act of a man on "skees" soaring 75 feet through the air, "across a yawning, death-defying chasm.
"An act of a thousand thrills!" proclaimed posters advertising the Greatest Show on Earth. "Seen for the first time this side of Norway's snow-capped peaks."
A hundred years ago, the "perilous Scandinavian sport of skee-ing" was little known to Americans. But their ignorance wouldn't last long. Traveling circuses such as Barnum & Bailey and Ringling Brothers—moving on railroad cars with hundreds of performers—constituted the biggest entertainment and cultural force in the nation at the time. The appearance of a ski jumper in the circus was thus guaranteed to make the new sport known to millions—today's equivalent of every television show ballyhooing the existence of the little-known telemark turn.
The man who performed "the fateful falcon flights on skimming skees" for Barnum & Bailey a century ago in New York's Madison Square Garden was "Captain" Carl Howelsen, a 30-year-old immigrant and Norwegian cross-country and jumping champion. Howelsen was paid $200 a week (more than $4,000 today) to "ski sail" down a 45-degree, vaseline-greased 100-foot slide, occasionally jumping over the backs of two elephants and landing in the arms of a pair of strongmen.
Howelsen left the circus after injuring his back. He eventually made his way to Colorado, settling in Steamboat Springs where he was the star of the community's first winter carnival. In 1914, the locals cleared trees for what came to be known as Howelsen Hill. A jump was erected, and later a grandstand and slalom hill, and a lift installed in 1938. Howelsen today is Colorado's oldest continuously operated ski area, with 15 trails down 440 vertical feet, a halfpipe, three jumps and cross-country trails. A jewel of a municipal park, it has produced 54 Olympic skiers, the most of any U.S. town—the fitting legacy of a man who flew through the air to proclaim the sport to America.
John Fry is the author of the award-winning "Story of Modern Skiing," a history of the sport after 1945.
