What do Dave McCoy, who built Mammoth Mountain, and Walt Disney have in common?

When I think about who has given me the best man-made playgrounds in my life, I have to give credit to Walt Disney and Dave McCoy for giving me all the fun. As a child growing up in Southern California, we would visit Disneyland 3-4 times a year for birthdays and special occasions with my family.

As an adult, I began making the pilgrimage to Mammoth Lakes to ski at the world famous Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort. I went skiing at Mammoth from just a few days a season to over 80 days a year recently.

I respect what Dave McCoy and Walt Disney were able to accomplish by following their passion, “Have Fun!” The other day, I was looking at a biography of Walt Disney and it struck me how many similarities Walt Disney and Dave McCoy have.

Here are the similarities that caught my eye:

1) They both turned their passion into profit by building playgrounds for the masses.

2) The demand for what they offered grew rapidly.

3) They are respectable family men, fearing God, backed by loving and supportive Wives.

4) They are possibility thinkers who did not let the derogatory comments of others discourage them from achieving their dreams. A saying I got from Dave McCoy when I was at his house recently was: “Impossible just means it takes a little longer.”

5) Both came from minimal educational and financial backgrounds.

6) Both had iconic logos: Dave had the Woolly Mammoth and Walt had Mickey Mouse.

7) Both men were innovators who had to develop and implement new tools and machinery to make their dreams come true.

8) Both men greatly inspired a workforce with their vision. Dave McCoy humbly told me recently, “Mammoth Mountain was not built by me. It was built by others.” And I replied: “Yes, but you inspired them!”.

9) Both men learned more about where to make changes in their businesses by “listening” to their customers. Dave McCoy told me that the reason he would stand on the side of the line, usually in chair 1 where people would charge, was because they would tell him what he needed to improve. Walt Disney did essentially the same thing by having his office on Main St. right inside Disneyland so he could observe visitor behavior and see where he needed to improve. Implementing what their paying customers told them helped them refine their visitor experience to the highest levels.

10) Both men left lasting legacies of good, clean family fun by bringing pleasure to millions of visitors.

Dave McCoy told me that he and Walt Disney met in the early 1950s. Walt would take his family skiing at Mammoth Mountain and had a cabin near the Mammoth Mountain Inn. Walt also invited Dave and his family to his studios in Burbank for a special visit.

Walt Disney and Dave McCoy will go down in history as men who followed their passion for fun and built resorts that hundreds of thousands of visitors still enjoy every day. Unfortunately, Walt Disney left us too soon after contracting cancer from the cigarettes he started smoking in the army.

Dave McCoy is still going strong and just celebrated his 96th birthday this past August. He is still very active in his projects. He spends time taking beautiful photos of the Eastern Sierra that he has loved since he was a child, and working on his solar/electric Rhino. My favorite photos I’ve purchased from Dave McCoy Photo are:

1) Dave’s recent photo of a beautiful rainbow over Gull Lake with Carson Peak in the background.

2) The iconic shot of Dave McCoy skiing under the Gravy Chute taken by Warren Miller which is on the wall of the McCoy station as you board the gondola.

If you love Mammoth Mountain and the Eastern Sierra, I bet you’ll enjoy Dave McCoy’s photos as much as I do. At this point, Dave McCoy will even sign the photo of him for you, making for some nice collectible art!