The Dreamer
Earl Eaton has had many ideas in his life. One idea -- Vail -- made lots of people rich and famous. Eaton isn't one of them.

Earl Eaton, 76, an original partner in the Vail ski area, still enjoys skiing at the resort he helped launch. Eaton left the company early and sold his stock cheap.

He is a prospector, an inventor, an explorer and most of all an idea man.

"I'm a dreamer," says Earl Eaton. "Always thinking about something."

Another Colorado skiing trailblazer: Christopher (Kit) Carson

He has had hunches about where to find gold and silver, platinum, diamonds and uranium. He once designed a five-legged ladder with adjustable legs for use on uneven terrain. And he spent countless days in the early 1950s scouting Colorado's backcountry for potential ski areas.

Eaton's biggest idea was that Vail Mountain was a natural for such a place.

He was right, of course. It's an idea the 76-year-old should be widely known for, but isn't. An idea that should've made him rich, but didn't.

To find the man who discovered North America's ski colossus, drive into the valley where Eaton grew up, past the mountain where he hunted deer as a teen, past the businesses and condos that stretch for mile after mile, past the ski areas and golf courses and multi-million-dollar homes.

Get off the interstate at Eagle, head south and look for the small red-brick house behind the Phillips 66 station. It's where Earl Eaton, the man who discovered Vail, lives.

He sits on an old futon couch and fingers five loose-leaf pages on which he has penciled his life story.

"I was born in Eagle County, Colo. near the town of Edwards," it begins. "I lived on a ranch in that area up thru my teen age years. On this ranch the winters were long, with a lot of snow. My two brothers and I spent a lot of time on home made skis and snowshoes. From this I first got bit by the ski bug."

In 1939, Eaton left home. He was 17, the chair lift had been invented three years earlier and the Loveland ski area was celebrating its second anniversary. Lift tickets cost a dollar.

He found work in Leadville's mines but soon was drafted into the Army. He helped build Camp Hale -- where Colorado's ski pioneers trained as the 10th Mountain Division -- and spent two years in Europe.

When he came home, Eaton headed back to the mines -- but he had bigger ideas.

"On weekends, I'd go prospecting for uranium. And I started dreaming about finding a new ski area," Eaton says. "I started climbing mountains, looking and dreaming. That's when I started looking at Vail Mountain, or what's Vail Mountain now. Didn't have a name back then."

Eaton, like a lot of veterans-turned-ski-bums, moved to Aspen. He was a ski patrolman during the day, partied at night and became friends with Pete Seibert, a 10th Mountain vet. Seibert, too, was interested in developing a ski area. Eaton told him about the nameless mountain on which he had staked 20-some mining claims.

On a clear day in March 1957, Eaton and Seibert headed up Mill Creek in the snow, to where mid-Vail stands today, then to the summit and a view of the vast, untouched back bowls.

"Took seven hours to get there," Eaton remembers. "By the time we skied to the bottom, Pete was interested. But he didn't have any money either."

But, unlike Eaton, Seibert knew people who did. Later that year, they quietly bought a 500-acre sheep ranch at the mountain's base for $55,000 -- $110 an acre.

The rest is skiing history.

"It's all right here," Eaton says, holding up the pages of his life.

Well, not exactly.

Eaton supervised the cutting of the first runs and the building of the first lifts, which opened in 1962. A full partner, he owned 21,000 shares of Vail stock and an acre in the valley where he would later build a house.

He was, in effect, the mountain manager, making $700 a month. He wanted more -- a real management job -- but says he was told that there would be no more.

Eaton's 35-year-old son, Micah, wasn't even born then, but he's heard the story from his mom.

"Truth is, nobody had any idea what Vail was going to be," he says. "Dad got screwed."

His father disagrees. "I forced myself out by not knowing what to do. I could have stayed there and been a lift mechanic. I only went one year of high school. Didn't know much about business. Wasn't much good at that. Still not, I guess."

He left Vail and worked as a consultant on new ski areas. "It didn't pay too good." Then, he tried to turn a nation's interest to ski-bobbing, a sort of bicycle on skis that was big in Europe. "It never did catch on here," Eaton says.

He had four kids, and bills to pay. So, in the late 1960s, he began selling his stock for a couple of bucks a share. Then he sold the house and the acre. It's worth millions today.

He puts the hand-written autobiography aside and looks down at his hands. The words come slow and soft.

"I sold it pretty cheap," he says of the house. "I forget what it was -- $70,000? Made a few dollars. If I had kept it, I would've made a lot of money. Just like the stock. I'd probably do it differently if I had to do it over. But I don't have it to do over."

And he has no regrets, no bitterness. "What good would it do?"

In 1979, he came back to the valley of his youth and worked as a $13-an-hour handyman at Beaver Creek. He has since retired and lives on Social Security and a Vail pension.

In October he was inducted -- some might say belatedly -- into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame. Eaton also has a lifetime ski pass -- helpful at a time when a lift ticket is $59 -- but he doesn't use it much.

"I don't have a lifetime parking pass," he says.

He remains a dreamer, though, a man of ideas. He and Micah have staked some claims in the mountains behind Eagle, land where Eaton is sure there's gold.

And now and then Eaton still scouts for a new ski area.

"I know a place in Rifle, almost got Disney interested in it," the man who discovered Vail says. "It's the ski area of the future. It's a natural, really. It would take somebody with a lot of money to buy up the land. A lot of money. You won't get it for $110 an acre, that's for sure."

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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