Wayne Poulsen was the man who found Squaw Valley in the first place. In 1943, he and his wife Sandy bought 640 acres there from the Southern Pacific Railroad, and by 1948 he had partnered with New York lawyer Alexander Cushing to build a ski resort on the site. The partnership soured quickly, and by October 1949 Cushing had taken control of the Squaw Valley Development Corporation, pushing Poulsen out of the operation he had started. Poulsen stayed in the valley anyway, running a small beginner’s ski area and continuing to acquire land with Sandy, eventually building the Squaw Valley Land and Livestock Company up to roughly 2,000 acres. When Cushing later won the bid to bring the 1960 Winter Olympics to Squaw Valley, planners set their sights on part of that same meadow, land the Poulsens still owned and had no intention of giving up without a fight.
Why officials wanted to pave over the Poulsen family ‘s meadow for the Olympics
According to the 1958 Congressional Record, the State of California offered Poulsen $103,000 for the land officials wanted to acquire, while Poulsen held out for $440,000, a gap wide enough that the dispute became a matter of congressional record rather than a quiet local transaction. The land in question sat at the heart of the plan for the Games, with organisers hoping to convert part of the meadow into a parking lot and, according to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, an open sewage treatment plant to serve the Olympic facilities. Poulsen resisted both proposals, determined to keep the meadow intact rather than hand it over for infrastructure he considered permanently damaging to the valley’s character.
How the Poulsen family used their own resources to block the Olympic land grab
The fight was not cheap for a family without Cushing’s outside capital or political connections behind them. The Hall of Fame describes Poulsen’s effort as an extremely costly battle, one he ultimately won despite the financial strain it placed on the family. According to the Poulsen family’s own account, later published through the sale listing for their original Squaw Valley home, Wayne and Sandy used all of their personal resources to protect the meadow, successfully blocking 150 acres of it from being paved over. That outcome meant Olympic organisers had to find another solution for the sewage and parking needs the meadow had originally been earmarked for, while the disputed land itself stayed in Poulsen hands.
What the Poulsen family’s fight over Squaw Valley meant after the 1960 Olympics
The dispute never repaired the relationship between Poulsen and the resort he had founded. Cushing went on to run Squaw Valley Ski Corporation through the Olympics and beyond, while Poulsen spent the following decades on the margins of the operation, consulting for other ski areas including Sugar Bowl, Bogus Basin and Mt. Rose rather than the resort that carried his original vision. Sandy later reflected on her husband’s response to losing control of the project he started, telling ski writer Robert Frolich in 2005 that Wayne had no hate in him at all, and that he was strong enough not to let what happened spoil his life. Wayne died in 1995 and Sandy in 2007, and the meadow they fought to protect remained a defining feature of the valley, eventually becoming part of a broader conservation effort when portions of the family’s remaining land were purchased for permanent public protection decades after the Olympics had put Squaw Valley on the world stage.
