Vintage pictures of Snow King Chairlifts without any safety bars that look very unsafe, 1950-1970

These vintage photos of the Snow King chairlift taken between the 1950s and 1970s show people riding very unsafely without any safety bars or other protections deployed.

While these chairlifts were indeed dangerous, there is also a forced perspective component that makes the lift appear to be much higher than it actually is.

Snow King Mountain Winter Resort is located in Downtown Jackson, Wyoming and the original 1936 ski hill was on the southeast edge of town. This was Wyoming's first ski area.

The first chairlift was installed in 1946, a converted ore tram from Colorado. It had four stations, with the first starting where 1 Town Hill Apartments are located.

Stations 2 and 3, which were at the top of the hill, were for beginner and intermediate skiers and snowboarders. In 1951, the old single-person lift was given an improved upper and lower terminal, new sturdier cables and 2-person chairs.

In 1978, the Rafferty Double was built on the eastern slopes of the resort near the Snow King Hotel. Upon completion, it brought a mini golf course and alpine slide.

In the summer of 2014, after nearly 35 years of service, the Rafferty double chair was removed to make way for a new and improved base area.

In 1981, the resort replaced the now 40-year-old "Snow King chairlift" with a new Doppelmeyer/Garventa CTEC double chair, which had started about 200 feet to the east of the old lift. This new lift carried a lift line that crossed about 3/4 of the way up the mountain.

The world's first three ski chair lifts were built in 1936 and 1937 for a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, which was then owned by the Union Pacific Railroad.

The first chairlift, after being removed, was installed on Proctor Mountain, two miles (3 km) east of the more famous Bald Mountain, the Sun Valley resort's primary ski mountain since 1939. A chairlift still remains on Rood Mountain, named for Thomas Rudd, a famous Norwegian ski racer.

The chairlift with its ski jump and original single chairs has been preserved as it was during WWII. The chairlift was developed by James Curran of Union Pacific's engineering department in Omaha during the summer of 1936.

Curren re-engineered the banana hooks with the chairs and made a machine with greater caliber than the up-ski toboggan (cable car) and better comfort than the J-bar, the two most common skier transports of the time—the mountain. In addition to climbing. His original design is still used for chairlifts today.