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Monday, February 12, 2018

The Disney Olympics: 1960 Winter Games

The 1950’s were an era in which it seemed that anything could be accomplished. As the dawn of the space era beckoned, the United States had embarked on a massive push to expand and improve its infrastructure. The country’s large investment would lead to unparalleled economic expansion, which led to ever larger private investments, one of which was Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Anaheim- DISNEYLAND.


It was an eagerness to show off these efforts to the world and a desire to jumpstart an underperforming ski resort that led to the Winter Olympics arriving near Lake Tahoe in 1960.


That a small, underperforming winter resort could rise from relative obscurity to a world renowned Olympic host city in such a small amount of time was unheard of. It could have only happened in California in the 1950’s. After Squaw Valley’s Olympic organizers realized how large a project staging the games would be, they ramped up construction and turned to the one person who they felt could assist them in accomplishing the impossible- Walt Disney.