During the winter of 1976, the Colorado Ski Museum opened for business at the intersection of Vail Road and Meadow Drive in Vail Village in a modest one-story building (pictured above) with no heat and just a few dozen items in its collection.

“In researching the founding of our museum, I discovered that it took a matter of two minutes to give a tour back then,” says Dana Zapfel, the museum’s curator and director of collections. That included a military snowcat called a Weasel (used to transport 10th Mountain Division ski troopers in World War II) and a Bradley Packer-Grader, a human-powered grooming machine towed by an exceptionally skilled skier (both displayed on the museum’s front lawn in this picture).

Today, a complete tour might take two hours. Because the museum’s holdings now include more than 15,000 artifacts, only a fraction is on display at its current location in the Vail Transportation Center, notably, the world’s most comprehensive permanent exhibition dedicated to the 10th Mountain Division.

For its 50th anniversary this year, the museum sent its 100 Years of Ski Fashion exhibit (a perennial visitor favorite) back to its sprawling archives in Wheat Ridge and replaced it with Freedom Found, a rotating exhibition commemorating the life and exploits of “ski stoke” film pioneer Warren Miller, who came to Vail to chronicle the resort’s early years, lived in the valley for more than a decade, and was inducted into the museum’s Hall of Fame in 1995. Must see: the cinematographer’s beloved 1947 Bell and Howell movie camera (which he kept nearby when he slept). Also debuting in 2026: Celebrating 50 Years of Colorado Snowsports, an exhibit dedicated to the golden anniversary of Vail Village's ski museum, featuring this historic photo (available, framed, for purchase at the museum store; $49).