While reading Elin Hilderbrand’s latest bestseller, “Swan Song,” I noticed that she mentioned Aspen several times. If you’ve read the Nantucket books, you know they explore the ups and downs of life in a tourist town. In this book, the two main characters, who recently paid $22,000,000 for a Nantucket home, claimed that their previous residence included “vacations in Palm Beach, then spent most of our winter skiing in Aspen.”

Although fictional, the book setting could easily be transferred to Aspen. Many other fiction books in the last decade have also referenced residence or tourism in Aspen. Some may want writers not to glorify our town; others love the free ads. Being “in” is good for real estate sales as well as restaurants, hotels and other tourist amenities.

The Hilderbrand line also focuses on resort workers, including seasonal workers. Waiters, waitresses, bartenders and others are woven into his plans. A waiter who is tired of the noise and heat in Las Vegas might consider moving there after reading one of his books, or to Aspen when our town is mentioned. Another spin-off of fiction based on a real and exciting setting.

Aspen didn’t break into the pages of bestsellers in the 1930s, but the town’s efforts to attract skiers took advantage of tying celebrities to tourism. In its early years, it was a sport with wealthy followers. During these Depression years, the federal government, through the U.S. Forest Service, was trying to encourage the development of skiing as a business with growth potential. Aspen wasn’t the only town trying to get off the ground floor of a new business.

The biggest rival with a few years’ head start was Sun Valley. Its developer, Averral Harriman, wanted to create a larger passenger trade for his railroad businesses and even chose Sun Valley to create a resort. He persuaded movie stars, including Norma Shearer, Gary Cooper and Claudine Colbert, to come to Sun Valley to broach the subject of skiing and traveling to a resort.

It worked.

Highland Bavarian partners copied Harriman’s approach, working to attract celebrities and wealthy clients to Aspen, spread the word, and establish that identity as the stylish place to go.

Partners Tom Flynn and two-time Olympic medalist Billy Fiske were in Los Angeles and persuaded movie star and comedian Jack Oakie and his wife, both skiers, to visit Aspen and ski. When asked by a reporter for an explanation of his impressions, Oakie said, “We’d better not even get started on that, because it would take a whole newspaper to tell you how much he liked it.”

Grandson of partner Ted Ryan, 10^This In 1928, the richest American recruited the East Coast ski crowd and wealthy travelers who often traveled to the Alps to come to Aspen. The war disrupted their efforts, but Aspen was already gaining recognition.

After the war, the Aspen Ski Company and Walter Paepcke used a similar method to create excitement. Their first success was getting movie star Gary Cooper and his three named wives (Veronica, Rocky, and Sanda Shaw for the movies) to move from Sun Valley to Aspen. They visited in 1948, fell in love with the city, bought property in Red Mountain and built a house. Life magazine published pictures of Cooper in Aspen in 1949, and Warner Brothers produced the short film “Snow Carnival”, which featured Cooper as narrator during scenes in Aspen and encouraging the California Zephyr to reach there.

It’s a cliché, but the rest is history.

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now, as a tourist in the town where he was born, he looks at the city from a historical perspective. Reach him at [email protected].