Riblet

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The Riblet Tramway Company was once the largest ski chairlift manufacturer in the world.

The Riblet Tramway Company was founded by Byron Christian Riblet. Riblet was born in Osage, Iowa, in 1865 and earned a degree in Civil Engineering. Arriving in Spokane in 1885, his first work was laying out railway and streetcar lines. He also built dams and irrigation projects.

In 1896, Riblet was contracted to erect a Finlayson ore tramway at the Noble Five silver mine in Sandon, British Columbia, to assist in moving ore down Payne Mountain to the mill at Cody. Apparently Riblet thought he was coming to build a streetcar line. Even so, Riblet decided he could improve the mining tram performance. Over time, Riblet raised more tramways in the booming mining district, building thirty aerial tramways in the next ten years. Riblet returned to Spokane in 1908, after working in the Kootenays, to found the Riblet Tramway Company. This company specialised in mining tramways building them in Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America.

Riblet built its first chairlift in 1938 at Mount Hood, Oregon. Byron Riblet died in 1952, but the company boomed with the new, postwar ski resorts. Skiing gained in popularity, and soon ski lifts became the major part of the Riblet Tramway Company's business. They built numerous lifts, particularly in Washington, Oregon and California, and even as far away as Australia. The company installed over 400 chairlifts.

Riblet lifts are known for their smooth ride—the chair grip is woven into the haul rope, rather than being clamped onto it. In Breckenridge, Colorado, some Riblet chairlifts are still at work; many others continue operation around North America. The company only built fixed-grip lifts and because of the currently limited market for such lifts, it announced in early 2003 that the firm was no longer viable and was going out of business.^[1]

1 See also
2 References
3 Sources
4 External links

[edit] See also

Detachable chairlift: the technological successor to the fixed-grip chairlift
Magic Mile: Riblet's first chairlift

[edit] References

^ Sowder, Douglas (2003-05-13). To: Our Friends in the Ski Industry (HTML). Riblet Tramway Company. Retrieved on January 23, 2007.

[edit] Sources

Martin J. Wells (December 2005). Tramway Titan: Byron Riblet, Wire Rope and Western Resource Towns. Trafford Publishing, Victoria. ISBN 1-4120-5093-6.