FRISCO — A gold-gilded box in Jody Anderson's home holds numerous colorful pins spanning decades of Frisco Gold Rush races. Each year's pin is a different design, and a symbol of Anderson's hard work.

The longtime Frisco resident was the driving force behind Colorado's oldest annual Nordic race. She conceived starting a Frisco event in 1969 when the local Nordic race club was short on funds to send kids to the USSA Junior National Nordic Championships in Alaska.

“The kids traded the pins all the time,” she said. “It was fun.”

The Frisco Gold Rush marks its 40th running Sunday, with proceeds to benefit the Summit Nordic Ski Club. The event is now run by the town.

A 1989 article in the Ten Mile Times said the race was considered to be the oldest and largest citizen's race in the Rocky Mountain region.

“Our kids got into ski racing,” Anderson said of her early involvement with the Summit Race Club and on becoming a race official. “There wasn't much to it back then.”

Anderson, who also ran a Nordic ski shop out of the Frisco Lodge in the early days, thought a race would be a better fundraiser for the Summit Race Club than bake sales and chili suppers. The first Gold Rush started at the old baseball fields on Tiger Road in Breckenridge and finished at what's now Summit Middle School, Anderson said. Race routes have been changed over the years to accommodate all the skiers.

“It was such a success, we were voted club of the year,” said Anderson, now 80.

She also noted that her good friend, Frisco resident Marie Zdechlik, played a big role in running the race. Zdechlik helped with timing from the first year on. Anderson also remembered when she and Zdechlik painted numbers on race bibs with stencils and toothbrushes. Bibs were hanging everywhere to dry — a laundry line, the basement, fences and trees. Zdechlik said the final number painted was 750.

“At the time nobody had money, and there wasn't a lot for kids to do at the time,” Zdechlik said of creating the Gold Rush race. “The main idea of the race was that every kid, rich or poor, got the same chance.”

Zdechlik said the race was a community-wide endeavor — families from all over Summit County worked together to make it happen.

A mountain mom

When Anderson and her husband decided to move from Aurora to run the Frisco Lodge on Main Street in the early 1960s, they had three daughters aged 7, 6 and 3.

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Anderson said. But it was a little town where the family could build a business, and they liked to ski.

Her daughters — Cheryl, Susan (who runs the Frisco Lodge now) and Laurie loved to play in the creek, and they went everywhere with their Saint Bernard Belle, who occasionally pulled a sled and wore a keg. Anderson's children also had a horse and a pony, which were kept in the yard at their home near the lodge.

According to Anderson, small-town life made it easy to get involved with the community. Her former husband, Charlie, was mayor within six months of moving to Frisco, and most of the meetings were held in the Frisco Lodge because no one wanted to turn on the heat at town hall. She also said Charlie drove a school bus and was vice president at the local bank. He currently lives in Arizona.

A woman who wore many hats

Upon moving to Frisco, Anderson was involved in both ski racing and the school, in the 1970s, she and Zdechlik taught kids to ski on a small hill over by the current middle school. The women cut trees down with chainsaws and burned the slash to create a small ski slope. At the time, new skiers weren't allowed at Arapahoe Basin, so the women taught the basics — how to snowplow and turn. The Ten Mile Times article said the women organized a group of 20 mothers to teach some 120 kids.

Anderson also worked as a public health nurse practitioner (she began in the late 1970s) and worked at the high school during the 1980s.

“Those were my theater days,” she said. Good friend Phyllis Armstrong, who also worked at the high school, lived with Anderson for many years until her death in 2005. They even had a foster son named Chuck.

Other early memories of Frisco from Anderson include town outhouses (Frisco lacked sewage lines way back when), a train running through a town alley, and the winter of 1963 when it was 50 below zero and “everything froze for a few days.”

The Andersons rented rooms at the Frisco Lodge for $5 back in the 1960s and 70s, and it was easier to ski every day because you could park and get directly on the chair lift, Anderson said.

Arapahoe Basin was a favorite ski spot, and she said “the Faculty Club” — a restaurant and bar at the ski hill — was a fun place to get a drink.

Anderson has six grandchildren and one great-grand daughter. She turned 80 Jan. 17.

Caitlin Row can be reached at (970) 668-4633 or at crow@summitdaily.com.