Reinventing mountain settlements: A GIS model for identifying possible ski towns in the U.S. Rocky Mountains

Former mining and ranching settlements in the U.S. Rocky Mountains frequently seek to reinvent themselves as the industries that created them have declined. Redevelopment as ski resorts is a common strategy that can successfully revive the economies of mountain settlements but this approach, if undertaken without careful advanced planning, can also have negative consequences, damaging fragile alpine environments, overwhelming social and housing services and distorting local economies. This study develops a GIS-based model that follows a systematic sequential elimination procedure to identify those Rocky Mountain settlements most likely to be attractive to ski resort development, based on the location criteria of existing ski areas. Results show that while no single settlement is an obvious candidate for development by the ski industry, a number of places are contenders in a way that can be systematically measured and evaluated. Moreover, the methodology used can be applied to additional areas subject to winter sports growth worldwide.