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Lecture On The History Of Overhead Tramways In Park City

Park City Museum

Park City Museum and he Friends of the Ski Mountain Mining History are hosting a lecture titled Overhead Tramways in Park City. The guest lecturer is a native of Park City and has experience working on the old Park City Mountain Gondola.  It’s being held at the Education and Collection Center at 2079 Sidewinder on Wednesday at 5 PM.

Steve Leatham is a graduate of Park City High when it was in the Carl Winter School building which is now known as the Park City Library. He grew up in Park City and acquired first-hand experience with aerial tramways decades ago with the Treasure Mountain Ski Area. Executive Director of the Park City Museum, Sandra Morrison says Leatham wrote his college thesis on tramways from the mining era.

“And when he was going to college down at the University of Utah, he got a job at the brand-new Park City, then called Treasure Mountain, now what we now know as Park City Mountain Resort. And he didn’t ski. Interestingly he grew up in Park City but didn’t ski. But he got the job as the foreman of the gondola, the brand-new mile long gondola and he was the foreman at the angel station. 
Morrison says the technology used for mining tramways is what the ski industry modeled to build lifts and all varieties of people movers.

“He’s a great person to give a lecture about the connections between current ski lift technology and mining aerial tramway technology because both were designed to move a lot of heavy material, or people up the hill in all kinds of weather.”

While working as the gondola foreman, Leatham began to research tramways that were used during the mining period in Park City. His thesis focused on the Silver King.

“The aerial tramways were the Silver King which is the big steel towers that run next to the Town Chairlift. And then we had the Judge Aerial Tramway which ran up the street from the Marsac building here. And then the third one was the King Con which was the Silver King Consolidated Mining Company.  And those were wood towers.

The lecture, Overhead Tramways in Park City is  Wednesday starting at 5 PM sharp at the Park City Museum Education Center at 2079 Sidewinder. The audience will have a chance to ask questions after the lecture. 
 

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