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.