Nov 18, 2015 Alf Engen – Special Collections

The Special Collections Department of the J. Willard Marriott Library would like to celebrate the 2015/2016 ski season by highlighting the archival collections of the Alf Engen family.

Alf Engen

Alf Engen was born in Norway and in 1929, at age twenty, immigrated to the United States with his younger brother, Sverre. They settled in Chicago, where the two brothers joined the American-Norwegian Athletic Club to meet fellow Norwegians. Engen and several members of the club traveled to Westby, Wisconsin, to participate in a ski jumping meet. With his first jump in the Westby Nordic event, Engen broke the world’s distance ski jump record, and was asked to join a group of professional jumpers that toured the North American Nordic circuit. In 1931, he settled permanently in Salt Lake City. His youngest brother, Kaare, and their mother, Martha, immigrated to the United States in 1933 and the three Engen brothers traveled the United States as professional jumpers, breaking Nordic records and gaining recognition wherever they went.

He was an international figure in the ski world, having won some five hundred trophies and medals in events around the world. Engen established the Alf Engen Ski School at Alta, Utah, and became director of the Deseret News and Telegram Free Ski School. In 1948, Engen and Walter Prager were co-coaches for the United States Olympic ski team. Engen was inducted into the United States Ski Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, Michigan, in 1956.

Click here to review digitized materials from the Alf Engen papers and here for digitized photograph images.

Alan K. Engen

Alan K. Engen is the son of Alf and Evelyn Engen. He was a member of the University of Utah ski team, and had an extensive career as a competitive skier. He is a ski historian and has authored the award-winning book, For the Love of Skiing – A Visual History, and co-authored First Tracks – A Century of Skiing in Utah. Currently he is Alta’s Director of Skiing, an inductee of the Utah Sports Hall of Fame, the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame, and the University of Utah Crimson Club Athletes Hall of Fame, and Chairman Emeritus of the Alf Engen Ski Museum Foundation.

The J. Willard Marriott Library is currently in the process of digitized some of the materials from his collection.

Corey (Kaare) Engen

In 1933, Corey Engen, at age sixteen, emigrated from Norway to Salt Lake City, Utah, to join his two older brothers. In 1948 he was elected captain of the United States Nordic Olympic Team. By 1949, Corey and his brothers, Alf and Sverre, were internationally known for their contributions and abilities in both Nordic and Alpine skiing. In 1961 he formed a successful business partnership with J. R. Simplot and Warren Brown to develop McCall’s Brundage Mountain into a ski resort. In 1987, the original business partnership that developed Brundage Mountain helped celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the McCall ski resort by opening a new ski lift.

To learn more about these unique collections, please refer to the online finding aids:

• Alf Engen Papers
• Alf Engen Ski Video Collection
• Alan K. Engen papers
• Alan K. Engen Photograph Collection
• Corey (Kaare) Engen Scrapbooks
• Digitized photographs and ski films are accessible online here.

To access these materials or if you have any questions please contact Special Collections at (801) 581-8863 or visit our website.