History

The Original Story of Dodge Ridge

With all the investment and planning California resorts undertake to improve their mountains, it’s hard to believe that Dodge Ridge is now in its 57th season.

In 1947, Earl Purdy was operating a profitable general store and gas station between the towns of Ripon and Manteca, called Simm’s Station, when he stumbled by chance upon the final venture of his multifaceted career.

“One morning he was drinking a cup of coffee in a grocery store in the town of Long Barn when neighbors casually mentioned that the US Forest Service had begun soliciting bids for development of a ski area at nearby Dodge Ridge,” recalls son, Ralph. Whimsically, Purdy added his name to the prospectus.

“Before utilizing the special use permit by the Forest Service, my dad toured western ski resorts for three months to decide if Dodge Ridge would be a viable economic product. He traveled 5,000 miles, as far away as Sun Valley. He visited Mammoth and Squaw Valley,” remembers Ralph.

“Upon his return he drove to where he thought the ski area should be built. He pulled out a matchbook and sketched the layout of the resort. While driving from ski resort to ski resort, he already had in his mind what Dodge Ridge was going to look like. And when the final project was completed, the plans looked exactly as he’d drawn on the inside of the matchbook.”

When Dodge Ridge opened in the fall of 1950, Purdy offered a Bob Heron state-of-the-art chairlift built for $95,000, a considerable sum in those days, complemented by three surface lifts. Twenty-seven million board feet of timber had been cut to clear runs. Additional facilities consisted of a seven hundred car parking lot and two-story day lodge, complete with ski shop and dining room. In all, Purdy‘s initial investment came to $250,000.

Challenge and change was nothing new to the former teacher, truck driver, highway patrolman, and professional violinist, who’d graduated from College of Pacific with a degree in architecture and an eye on the future.

“He’d been looking for a new business, something in the mountains to be closer to his family. He no longer enjoyed the commute to his store. He put his name down along with a one hundred dollar fee and forgot about it,” says Ralph’s brother George. “Three months later the Forest Service contacted my father to see if he was interested. They’d rejected the other bidders. They had studied his business history and chosen him. It was something of a shock.”

Purdy didn’t know a lot about the ski industry. He’d only picked up the sport during his forties after his children began to take lessons, but he had a lot of energy and common sense. And he loved the mountains.

The son of a forest ranger, Purdy as a youth explored the Sierras of Tuolumne County near Sonora Pass to fish the rivers. He hiked the Dodge Ridge area, then called Lava Ridge, a name received from prehistoric andesite lava flows that had eroded the landscape into jagged crests and splintered capitals. From its rocky heights the terrain gave way to thick forests of Bennett Junipers, the largest and oldest known specimen of western juniper. On clear days from the ridge’s 8,200 foot summit he could spot the high reaches of Mount Diablo on the coast. When his wife Mary and son George both developed asthma and needed a change of climate, Purdy, who felt attached to the Sonora Pass area, moved his family to the town of Long Barn, twenty-five miles below Dodge Ridge next to the border of Stanislaus National Forest.

On its opening day, three thousand skiers flocked to Dodge Ridge. Tickets sold at three dollars for an all day lift pass and one dollar for a rope tow pass. Purdy never looked back. Within just a two month ski season, Dodge Ridge attracted nineteen thousand patrons. The next year numbers increased to twenty-five thousand visitors. The ski resort grew into the driving force for an awakening sport that helped change Tuolumne County into one of California’s most popular recreational spots. Dodge Ridge became a consistently profitable venture among ski resorts. Until he sold the resort in 1977, Purdy only reported one bad year, 1963, when snow didn’t arrive until March.

Part of the success was geographical. Less than one hundred miles from either Modesto or Stockton, and only one hundred fifty miles from San Francisco, Dodge Ridge was the closest one-day resort in the mountains. Visitors didn’t hit snowy roads until they reached Long Barn. From snowless terrain there they climbed to Dodge’s base elevation, which at 6,600 feet, insured good snow conditions. Even during gasoline shortage years such as the Korean War and in the early 1970s, Dodge Ridge’s parking lot remained at capacity. In 1973, during the height of the OPEC gas crisis, 170,000 skiers graced the slopes of Dodge Ridge.

Relying on his keen business sense, Purdy stressed a cautious approach to capital improvements. He never built housing facilities, relying on nearby accommodations in the immediate area to take care of demands. Over the succeeding years, the resort added lifts and expanded facilities only as the income warranted them. It was more than ten years after the opening date before Dodge Ridge installed a second chairlift. In 1968, Dodge Ridge completed a $300,000 expansion, which included two new double chairlifts and the first section of a new 16,000 square foot lodge.

“The most important skill my father had, however, was people skills,” says Ralph Purdy. “He had a talent for choosing key people to run the different resort departments. He had genuine concern for people. He instilled in his employees a sincerity for customers to make them feel welcome. The customer came first.”

“My dad loved the mountains and the ski business,” says Ralph, whose father passed away in 1991. “His reward was going to work. He liked people. He was always looking out for the public and the betterment of the community. It was the most enjoyable part of his life. He’d always ask, “Are we having fun?”

At age seventy, Purdy finally decided to sell Dodge Ridge. Frank Helm and his family bought the resort in 1976 and have remained steadfast in the resort’s traditions ever since.

Frank decided that working at the family Chevrolet dealership in Modesto wasn’t what he had in mind for a career. A lifelong outdoorsman who loves skiing, snowboarding, hiking, bicycling and fly fishing, Frank learned in 1976 that Dodge Ridge was for sale and saw the opportunity to own and operate this popular Central Sierra ski area. He jumped at the chance. The graduate of Taft Prep School in Connecticut and the University of California at Berkeley (with a Political Science degree) has long been active in making the sport better. He is the former President of the California Ski Industry Association and is the present treasurer of the National Ski Areas Association.

To keep in close contact with his customer base, Helm, 61, snowboards several times a week, interacting with guests and staying visible to his employees. His wife, Sally, oversees departmental management and the resort’s 400 plus seasonal employees, and can be discovered anywhere at anytime on the mountain parking cars to dishing out food.

In 1985, Helm built Chair 7 to double Dodge Ridge’s existing terrain. Then in 1999, Frank and Sally forged ahead once again by initiating a $3.5 million improvement package that included the installation of a fixed-grip quad chair in Boulder Canyon, additional restaurant facilities in the base lodge and an expanded rental shop.

“I doubt we’ll ever put in overnight facilities, and we can’t enlarge the ski area anymore, but we have the ability to modernize, continue to improve, and even put in more chairlifts some day. However we round out things, Dodge Ridge’s appeal will always be focused on family and customer service.”

Fifty years after Earl Purdy’s matchbook-drawn ski resort was born, Dodge Ridge now offers fifty-nine trails spread over 815 acres and accessed by nine lifts. The mountain is friendly to all, cradling the novice and catering to families. Many runs are on gentle, soothing trails that offer a wide spectrum of delights. Intermediates enjoy the rolling shoulders of Stagecoach, Graceland and Comstock runs. Some of the best beginner terrain can be discovered in SkiWee Land, home to one of the finest ski and snowboard school programs in North America. The SkiWee starter program (kids ages 4-8) and the Trackers follow-up program (youths ages 9-12), adjacent to the resort’s nordic ski trailheads, cater to kid-style fun while developing youthful skills on the slopes. The Children’s Ski Center building reinforces a playful, kids only atmosphere while on-mountain interactive features allow children to test their skills and experience history by tooling through a Gold Mine, Bear Cave, and Lumber Mill.

A recent expansion in Boulder Creek Canyon opened up 265 acres of expert terrain. Straight-lining the face of Six Shooter is a thigh-burner. If its steeps look too foreboding, bail out by heading straight off the chair into High Noon. Or you can test your skills by descending into the Granite Bowl, a full-fare adventure that lets your mind and skis wander. Other wild shots and sweat-induced plunges await in Sonora Glades. Roaming along the Skyline, traverse enthusiasts can choose from a menu of narrow romps and playful pitches with views that extend all the way up Sonora Pass.

But for all its modern amenities, easy rolling shoulders, calming views, and rugged beauty, Dodge Ridge remains a throwback to an on-snow experience that harkens back to a former era launched by exuberant outdoorsmen. There are few off-slope attractions. The resort remains more of a rarefied mountain outpost where people, bound by a collective independent spirit, happily rub elbows and revel in the seductive vistas and beautiful wonder of nature. The high alpine resort still prides itself on being all things to all people. After 50 plus years, the resort, more than anything, preserves the vision of both it’s ownerships, presently Frank and Sally Helm, and Founder Earl Purdy.