[1] Jack English, developer and owner of Indianhead Mountain Resort in Michigan,[2] invested two years of improvements to the site that opened as Indianhead Ski Area of Colorado in December 1961[3] with two rope tows from the defunct Magic Mountain ski area in Golden, a Heron double chair, and a Constam T-bar.

[4]) Indianhead went into foreclosure and the property was sold at auction to then-state Senator (later Governor) Roy Romer and the Walter J. Burke family, who renamed the ski area to Geneva Basin.

[7] The ski area was sold to an investment group based in Kansas in 1972 and the T-bar was replaced with a Heron Poma double chair in 1974.

[8] Following a precipitous drop in business during the 1976-1977 season caused by an unusually low amount of snowfall,[9] Geneva Basin installed US$400,000 (equivalent to $2,011,203 in 2023) in snowmaking equipment.

During the 1983-1984 season, an empty chair on the Duck Creek lift fell from the cable, prompting the Colorado Tramway Board to shut the ski area down until the maintenance issues were resolved.

[11][12] In November 1993, Park County voters were asked to approve a recreation tax designed to finance the ski area's reopening.