Whipple Van Ness "Whip" Jones (November 8, 1909 – June 29, 2001) was a ski industry pioneer, founder, developer and the original operator for 35 years, of the

Aspen Highlands Aspen Highlands is a skiing mountain in Aspen, Colorado. It is famous for the Highland Bowl, which provides what some people consider some of the most intense, wild, and fun skiing in the state. The Aspen Skiing Company operates Aspen Highlands. ...

ski area in

Aspen Aspen is a common name for certain tree species; some, but not all, are classified by botanists in the section ''Populus'', of the ''Populus'' genus. Species These species are called aspens: *'' Populus adenopoda'' – Chinese aspen (China ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

. Whip Jones and the company he founded, Aspen Highlands, won a

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

case against his rival, the

Aspen Skiing Company The Aspen Skiing Company, known locally as Ski Co, is a commercial enterprise based in Aspen, Colorado. The Aspen Skiing Company operates the Aspen/Snowmass resort complex, comprising four ski areas: Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, an ...

. Jones was also a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

, and was inducted into The Colorado Ski Hall of Fame and The Aspen Hall of Fame for his work with Aspen Highlands.

Early years

Jones was born in

Oconomowoc, Wisconsin Oconomowoc ( ) is a city in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, United States. The name was derived from Coo-no-mo-wauk, the Potawatomi term for "waterfall." The population was 15,712 at the 2010 census. The city is partially adjacent to the Town of Oco ...

, to Esther Olin Whipple (1884–1977) and Frank William Jones I (1876–1936). A 1932 graduate of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, he married heiress Mary Sue McCulloch (1913–1996). He was a captain in the Missouri State Guard and worked as a trust officer at the St. Louis Union Trust Company. At the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he transferred to the

US Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical ri ...

and rose to the rank of

lieutenant colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...

Founder of Aspen Highlands

Jones was the builder and the owner of the

, one of the four ski areas of Aspen, Colorado. Aspen Highlands had its beginning in 1956. Jones owned the land at the base of the mountain and became interested in developing it after the Forest Service suggested it would be a "great place for a ski area." Jones first offered the opportunity to

who turned it down. He then hired

Dick Durrance Richard Henry Durrance (October 23, 1914 – June 13, 2004) was a 17-time national championship alpine ski racer and one of the first Americans to compete successfully against Europeans. Durrance was born in Tarpon Springs, Florida, and mo ...

to do a feasibility study an
Fritz Benedict
to design a lodge. Jones went ahead with the project on his own, and laid out a well-balanced set of ski runs: 25% beginner, 50% intermediate, 25% advanced. Jones financed the project by selling the lumber from the cleared ski runs and using low cost labor. When the area opened in 1958 it had three lifts, including the world's longest single section double chairlift and eventually grew to over 50 trails. The base area of Highlands Mountain is located miles from the village of Aspen.

Supreme Court antitrust case

Throughout his ownership,

and founder Jones remained at odds with the local rival

, which owned and operated the three other ski areas Aspen Mountain (Ajax),

Buttermilk Buttermilk is a fermented dairy drink. Traditionally, it was the liquid left behind after churning butter out of cultured cream. As most modern butter in western countries is not made with cultured cream but uncultured sweet cream, most mod ...

and Snowmass in Aspen, with Jones owning the remaining independent ski area,

. In 1979, Jones sued the

, alleging violations of the

Sherman Act The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (, ) is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce. It was passed by Congress and is named for Senator John Sherman, its principal author. Th ...

. Aspen Highlands and Aspen Skiing had, for several years, cooperated to sell an "all-Aspen" ticket that allowed a skier to visit Aspen Skiing's three mountains and Aspen Highlands. However, the rival companies were unable to agree on a means to administer this program and distribute proceeds. In 1978, Aspen Skiing decided to discontinue the all-Aspen ticket, and to instead sell only the ticket to the three Aspen Skiing mountains. Aspen Skiing also refused to sell Aspen Highlands any lift tickets to the Aspen Skiing mountains (even at full price), thereby preventing Aspen Highlands from offering its own multi-mountain package. The issue made it to the

and was decided as with Jones winning over $10 million in treble damages.

Halls of Fame

In 1998, Jones was inducted into the Aspen Hall of Fame and in 2000, he was inducted into th
Colorado Ski Hall of Fame
http://www.coloradoskihalloffame.com/images_bio_htm_files/Whip_Jones.htm]. At the induction ceremony, the Colorado Hall of Fame note

Whip's vision and marketing ingenuity proved invaluable when he had to compete with the larger Aspen Ski Corporation... His innovative marketing lured many a skier to the Highlands with the promise of fun. Many Coloradans remember with nostalgia the wine and cheese parties
Stein Erickson's
flips on skis, and the opening of Steeplechase near the top of Loge Peak--a steep, avalanche-prone slope that gave expert skiers a taste of adventure.

Death

He died on June 29, 2001, in

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, Florida, Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In ...

, after a long illness.

Harvard endowment

In 1992, after the longest continuous ownership of any ski area in Colorado, Jones donated the Highlands to

The $18.3 million gift remains one of the largest donations the University has ever received. The proceeds endow the "Whipple V.N. Jones Cornerstone Scholarship Fund" and the "Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Economics Chair" once held by Andrei Shleifer

and currently held by

Xiao-Li Meng Xiao-Li Meng (; born 1963) is a Chinese American statistician and the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. He received the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2001. He has written numerous research papers about Markov chain Mo ...

References

External links

New York Times funeral notice

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Whip 1909 births 2001 deaths People from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin Businesspeople from St. Louis Harvard University alumni American chief executives American sports businesspeople American sports executives and administrators People from Aspen, Colorado Aspen Skiing Company 20th-century American businesspeople