Did you know today's Schweitzer — Idaho's largest ski area, with 2,900 acres and ten lifts overlooking Lake Pend Oreille — spent its first two decades as a non-profit corporation owned by hundreds of local stockholders? The modern destination resort that millions of skiers know was built one ownership era at a time, and each new hand on the wheel left something lasting on the mountain.
The first of those hands belonged to co-founder Jim Brown Jr., a Sandpoint sawmill owner, who took the ski area private in the early 1980s. He started summer chairlift rides in 1986, and in 1988 renamed the place Schweitzer Mountain Resort, adding hiking trails and mountain bike rentals so the mountain could earn its keep year-round. When Brown died in April 1989, his daughter Bobbie Huguenin took over with an even bigger vision: to turn Schweitzer into a true destination resort. Under her leadership the original lodge was replaced with the three-story Headquarters Day Lodge, a detachable quad chairlift was installed in the fall of 1990, lights went up for night skiing, and the 82-room Green Gables Lodge rose in the village. The ambition outran the balance sheet, though — the resort entered receivership in November 1996 and filed for bankruptcy in 1997.
A new chapter began on December 31, 1998, when Seattle-based Harbor Properties — already operators of Washington's Stevens Pass and Mission Ridge — purchased Schweitzer from U.S. Bank for $18 million. Harbor remodeled Green Gables into the Selkirk Lodge and, in the summer of 2000, installed the Stella six-passenger chairlift to serve the Northwest Territory in Colburn Basin, replacing the old fixed-grip double Chairlift #5 and growing the resort to 2,500 acres. In July 2005 ownership changed again, with the McCaw Investment Group of Seattle becoming sole owner. The McCaw years brought the Idyl-Our T-Bar and Little Blue expansion — 400 more acres and five new named trails — plus a $6 million lift program in 2007 that replaced the original Chair One with the Basin Express high-speed quad and the Lakeview Triple. By the time Schweitzer became an Ikon Pass partner in 2021, the resort had invested well over $100 million in terrain, lifts, the mountaintop Sky House lodge, and the 31-unit Humbird boutique hotel in the village.
The latest hand on the wheel arrived on August 22, 2023, when Alterra Mountain Company closed its purchase of Schweitzer's ski operations, making the Sandpoint-area mountain the 17th destination in its family of year-round resorts. President and COO Tom Chasse stayed on to lead the transition, and the growth continues: the aging Musical Chairs double was replaced with the new Creekside Express quad for the 2025–26 season, and plans for the Base Camp arrival area call for 1,400 additional parking spaces. From a stockholders' co-op to an international destination, Schweitzer has reinvented itself every decade — and the Selkirk skyline keeps getting better.