Everett Kircher And The Boyne Usa History

Everett Kircher and Boyne USA

The Boyne USA corporation is the largest privately owned skiing corporation in America. The Boyne empire reaches from golf courses in Florida to Cyprus Mountain near Vancouver, British Columbia. Boyne is now entering its sixtieth successful season of operation. This success can only be attributed to the ingenuity and diligence of Everett Kircher, and the entire Kircher family.

In 1947 a young Everett Kircher moved north from Detroit with ambitions to open his own ski resort. He had saved up a significant amount of money selling cars. His ambitions became reality when he purchased forty acres of hillside near Boyne City, Michigan for one dollar. After making some more relatively inexpensive infrastructure investments, including purchasing the Midwest's first chairlift from Sun Valley, Idaho. Boyne Mountain was open with hardly a dent out of Kircher's pocket.

The first few seasons at Boyne went exceptionally well, which led to a surplus of money. Then an opportunity fell into the lap of Kircher which would pave the way for the whole Boyne corporation. In 1953 a struggling hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee requested the services of Everett to construct a chairlift to the top of the mountain on their property. Everett agreed as long as the chairlift was a Boyne property, and not that of the hotel. The Gatlinburg Skylift as it was dubbed became a hugely popular tourist destination due to the scenic vistas of the Great Smokey Mountains it offered. To this day the Skylift is one of Boyne's most profitable pieces of property receiving over 300,000 visitors a year. The success of the Skylift is what made the Boyne corporation so successful in other ventures.

In the late 50's using the capitol earned from the Skylift Boyne purchased the struggling ski resort of Harbor Highlands near Boyne, and created Boyne Highlands. Without having to borrow any money Kircher was now at the head of three very profitable pieces of land, and the money, and customers were pouring in. This surplus of money gave Everett the chance to experiment with different things around his resorts. Over the next two decades he received several patents, many of which are seen every day at a ski resort.

In 1963 Kircher received his first patent for the triple chairlift. The world's first triple was installed that year at Boyne Highlands. The triple was conceived as a way of reducing the lift lines at the resort. In 1967 Kircher received his second chairlift patent, this time for the quad chairlift. The world's first quad was this time installed at Boyne mountain. Both chairlifts were manufactured by Heron, a company that has long since been gone. In 1974, with the help of SMI (Snow Machines Inc.) Kircher patented the Boyne snowmaker. The Boyne snowmaker became a staple in the snowmaking world due to its ability to make snow in marginal temperatures. The new design incorporated a small amount of electricity and air to a large volume of water, which was much more efficient than past designs.

During this time Kircher was looking for a way to make money during the summer months. This began Kircher's fascination with golf. In the mid fifties using only an ancient ford tractor, Kircher designed and built his own golf course at the base of Boyne Mountain. This course, titled the Executive Course consisted of eight par threes and one par four. Despite the miniature size of the course it became very popular, and remained that way until 2002 when it was removed to make way for a base village. Today Boyne offers some of the finest quality public courses in the world, including four courses at Highlands, and a course designed by world famous golfer Arnold Palmer at Big Sky Montana.

In 1974 news anchor Chet Huntley opened a ski resort entitled Big Sky in Montana. Unfortunately, Chet passed away only four months after the resort opened. Everett Kircher and the Boyne Corporation stepped in and purchased the resort, marking the beginning of Boyne's westward movement. Eager for more properties to include in the Boyne chain of resorts, Kircher pounced on a struggling Brighton Ski Resort. At the time in the late eighties Brighton was overshadowed by neighboring resorts of Utah's Cottonwood Canyons. With Kircher at the helm a deal which had been in the making for years finally went into action with neighboring Sunlight Ski Area. The resorts were interconnected via the "Solbright" connector and made available under the same pass. This nearly doubled the terrain for both resorts, and made them more noticeable against the giants of Snowbird and Alta. After the purchase of Brighton in 1987, Boyne set their sights on the west coast mountains.

Crystal Mountain near Mount Rainer in Washington state went through a lot of development and became the states largest ski resort in the late 1980s. But all the development costs added up on the owners of the resort, they in turn went bankrupt. Boyne saw another big investment in Crystal Mountain, as they purchased the struggling resort

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