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Trouble. In Squaw's first five years of operation, avalanches ripped out lift towers three times. The lodge was cut off four times by bridge washouts, flooded out twice, later (in 1956) burned to the ground. Poulsen and Cushing had increasingly sharp differences. The showdown came in October 1949, when, in Poulsen's absence on an international flight for Pan Am, his wife Sandy fired off letters to Squaw stockholders accusing Cushing of mismanagement. A stockholders' meeting was called, and the result was inevitable, since Cushing owned 52% of the stock, his friends another 46%. After an audit showed nothing legally wrong, Cushing replaced Poulsen as president of Squaw Valley Development. Today, a bitter Poulsen still controls choice homesites in the valley (and stands to become a millionaire with the land boom caused by Cushing's getting the Olympics), but Cushing and the corporation have exclusive ski rights, since they possess the only lift permit allotted to the area by the U.S. Forest Service.
The opening of Squaw Valley Lodge on Thanksgiving Day, 1949, was a memorable fiasco. Cushing had to hire strikebreakers when his union workmen struck the week of the opening, hooked up plumbing himself. Justine hurriedly summoned the domestic couple from their New York home, pressed a friend into service as a chambermaid. One woman guest arrived early, found Cushing still at work on the plumbing. Snarled Alec: "Madam, come back in three hours, and we'll be ready. Meanwhile, don't bother me." That night everything went wrong. There was no dinner until 10. Only one toilet was working, and the waiting line for it snaked out into the lobby. One of Cushing's daughters tripped, broke her leg. A guest ran over one of his dogs. The whole thing was, to use Cushing's word, "ghastly."
To Get Space. One day in 1954, a two-paragraph item in the San Francisco Chronicle caught Alec Cushing's eye. Reno had bid for the Olympic Games. Cushing had only one chair lift at Squaw then, but he decided to apply too. "I had no more interest in getting the games than the man in the moon," he admits. "It was just a way of getting some newspaper space." The space he got in West Coast papers brought a flood of encouraging letters, made up Cushing's mind: "When I got letters from all those people saying what a nice thing I was doing, it made me feel bad."
There were only six weeks in which to ready Squaw Valley's bid for consideration as the U.S. nominee to stage the games. Cushing moved quickly, enlisted the support of California State Senator Harold ("Biz") Johnson and Governor Goodie Knight, got the legislators to revive an old bill that had promised Los Angeles money to back its successful 1932 Summer Olympics bid, pass a new version to guarantee $1,000.000 for Squaw. Old Friend and Squaw Stockholder (5%) Laurance Rockefeller gave his support. With evidence of financial backing, a hastily prepared brochure and a charming dissertation on Squaw ("I'm a very strong speaker when I'm convinced"), Cushing sold the U.S. committee. His next target was the delegates to the Paris meeting of the International Olympic Committee, who would decide the site of the games.