Some transformational projects never came to fruition, like a gondola running from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point or a railroad built through the heart of the park. Others, like an airstrip for small planes constructed in a meadow just west of Yosemite Lodge, did happen despite the outrageous logistics of landing an aircraft in the Sierra Nevada. However, none sound more ridiculous and farfetched than the idea that Yosemite could host the Olympic Games.

But it was a very real possibility in 1932 — and had it happened, the Yosemite bid for the Winter Olympics could have changed the trajectory of America’s national parks forever.

“It’s a bonkers idea,” said Megan Orpwood-Russell, Yosemite Conservancy director of communications. “It wouldn’t happen now. There are very big differences these days in how the park approaches protecting and managing the land.”

This event wouldn’t have been comparable to today’s Games. The Winter Olympics were in their infancy approaching the 1932 Games, having only been held twice before (France in 1924 and Switzerland in 1928). There were 14 total events, including ski jumping, cross-country skiing, ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating and bobsleigh. In all, 252 athletes competed in the 1932 event. That number pales in comparison with the 2,834 athletes that were in Beijing for the most recent Winter Olympics in 2022. 

The facilities were vastly different at that time, too. They might have been big by 1930s standards, but not anywhere near the size of the mammoth venues we see in images broadcast across the globe in the modern-day Olympic Games.

Orpwood-Russell, who recently wrote about the failed Olympics bid and other notable projects, told SFGATE the idea was pushed by Yosemite Park and Curry Company President Donald Tresidder to try and get winter tourism going. “He and his wife went to Switzerland in the late 1920s and were so captivated by what they saw there, they came back and wanted to make [Yosemite] a winter sports destination,” she said. “They wanted to establish Yosemite as the ‘Switzerland of the West,’ which is a bold goal.”

Tresidder organized the Yosemite Winter Club in 1928 to “encourage and develop all forms of winter sports and to advertise and exploit the great advantages, beauties and healthy benefits of winter in the California Sierra to all lovers of outdoor life.” Within five years of the club’s formation, the Badger Pass Ski Resort opened and Curry Village was hosting ice skating and tobogganing events. During the 1930s, park officials grew Badger Pass and other ski areas, though many were abandoned in later years because they weren’t deemed to be safe.

“I don’t think it was that preposterous,” said Cory Goehring, Yosemite Conservancy lead naturalist. “Badger Pass was one of the first ski areas in California. Yosemite had a lot of Olympians that were there. The Badger Pass Ski School had all sorts of top competitors in snow sports at that time. Even though it was a small ski hill, basically. It was sort of a premiere destination for the United States before the resorts in Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain.”

Three U.S. locations bid for the 1932 Olympic Games: Yosemite, Tahoe (which would later host California’s only Winter Olympics in 1960) and Lake Placid, N.Y. To that point, California had little to no experience hosting any sort of large-scale winter sporting events — a fact that hurt both Yosemite and Tahoe in the bidding process. “They built an ice rink and made this big show about it,” Orpwood-Russell said of Yosemite’s attempt.

The ice rink at Curry Village was “touted as the largest in North America,” part of the public relations campaign to land the Games. The park even hosted the inaugural San Joaquin Valley-Sierra Winter Sports Carnival in January 1931 for an estimated 3,700 visitors (including participants).

“The competition was so fierce that the head of the Lake Placid, N.Y., bid wrote to Tresidder to ask him to withdraw” Yosemite’s bid, the Conservancy’s site says. In the end, “Lake Placid won out” and Yosemite remains the only U.S. national park to ever submit an Olympic bid.

The park hosted the U.S. figure-skating tryouts at Curry Village before the Games. They also may have gotten the last laugh — Lake Placid had a record low snowfall that winter while Yosemite was slammed with a record high snowfall.

Nowadays, backcountry skiing at Badger Pass and ice skating at Curry Village remain popular winter options at Yosemite. Both serve as a small reminder of what could have been. “I think if we would’ve had the Olympics in a national park, it would’ve set a bad precedent moving forward,” Goehring said. “Now, we have a narrower vision of what the national parks are. We understand the national parks are there to preserve this pristine landscape. The idea of the large Olympic facilities, that’s not the idea of the national parks. We were still sort of adapting to this view in the 1930s.”