Sport: With Homemade Snow and Dreams of the Past

Eager and determined, Lake Placid prepares to hold the 13th Winter Olympics

The people of Lake Placid were persistent. Their parents had played host to—and many had competed in—the Winter Olympics of 1932, and they wanted to bring the Games back to their village. Over and over they trooped to meetings of the International Olympic Committee and submitted proposals, only to be snubbed for such fashionable Alpine resorts as Cortina and Innsbruck. When the I.O.C. agreed on an American site for 1960, the nod went to the Sierra Nevadas and Squaw Valley, but...