Red Barn Event - Norwegians Bring Ski Jumping to the PNW and Leavenworth

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Join the Wenatchee River Institute, Greater Leavenworth Museum, Northwest Ski Museum, and the Leavenworth Winter Sports Club for an evening with John Lundin to learn about the history of ski jumping in our mountain town. Copies of his book, "Ski Jumping in Washington State: A Nordic Tradition," will be available for purchase at the event.

Ski jumping, once Washington's most popular winter sport, was introduced by Norwegian immigrants in the early twentieth century. It began at Spokane's Browne's Mountain and Seattle's Queen Anne Hill, then moved to midsummer tournaments on Mount Rainier in 1917 and expanded statewide as new ski clubs formed. Washington tournaments attracted the world's best jumpers--Birger and Sigurd Ruud, Alf Engen, Sigurd Ulland and Reidar Andersen, among others. In 1941, Torger Tokle set two national distance records here in just three weeks. Regional ski areas hosted national and international championships as well as Olympic tryouts, entertaining spectators until Leavenworth's last tournament in 1978.

John W. Lundin is a lawyer, historian and author. He's a founding member of the Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum. John learned to ski using wooden skis, leather boots and rope tows. John has written four award winning books: Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass (2017); Sun Valley, Ketchum and the Wood River Valley (2020); Skiing Sun Valley: a History from Union Pacific to the Holdings (2020), (recipient of three national book awards); and Ski Jumping in Washington State: a Nordic Tradition (2021). He helped organize two exhibits on ski jumping: “Sublime Sights: Ski Jumping in Nordic America” at Seattle’s National Nordic Museum in 2021; and “Skiers in Flight: Sun Valley’s Ski Jumping Roots” at the Regional History Museum in Ketchum, Idaho, in 2022. He won the 2023 Western Heritage Prize from the Far West Ski Association and Steamboat Springs Resort for his multi-year “Work to Preserve Ski Jumping History, Expressing Norwegian Identity and Its Role in the Development of Skiing History.”