Founder Boyne USA Resorts (Deceased) – Boyne Falls, Michigan
Everett F. Kircher Founder Boyne USA Resorts Boyne Falls, Michigan In the late 40s, Everett Kircher owned a small car dealership in Detroit. He had long been an avid skier, traveling annually to the Rockies to indulge his passion for the sport. And in 1947, he and two fellow skiers purchased an unimposing 500-foot mountain in northern Michigan so they might pursue their favorite pastime a little more easily. From this inconspicuous beginning, building a modest ski retreat while still selling cars in Detroit, Everett Kircher launched an enterprise that was to become one of the largest individually owned resort empires in the world. Today, Boyne USA Resorts consists of five major ski and summer resorts: Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands in northern Michigan, Big Sky in Montana, Brighton Ski Bowl near Salt Lake City, and Crystal Mountain in Seattle. Boyne USA also owns and operates a scenic chair lift in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and ten golf courses from Montana to Florida. The growth of these enterprises has been the result both of determination and innovation. Mr. Kircher is credited with developing the word’s first three- and four-person chairlifts and for installing the first detachable six-place chairlift in the United States. Mr. Kircher pioneered artificial snowmaking and co-invented the first efficient device for marginal temperature snowmaking. He patented the snowmaker that is currently used around the world. And he was in the forefront of many of the grooming techniques and much of the equipment used today, including the first snow tiller in 1965. Kircher was among the first to transform ski resorts into year-round recreational facilities by developing beautiful and renowned golf courses on his properties in the late 60s. The opening of “The Heather” course at Boyne Highlands in 1968 signaled the beginning of the golf boom in Northwest Michigan where courses designed by Palmer, Nicklaus, Trent Jones, and others now make this region “America’s Summer Golf Capital.”
