73 years ago, Courchevel was born!
At the end of the Second World War, while the Swiss, Austrian and German resorts were
the world, in 1941, the government mandated a team to find the ideal location in the
team to look for the ideal location in the French Alps to establish an international
an international winter resort.
The "1942 Mission" studied the potential slopes, the amount and duration of snow cover, the sunshine, the wind, the access, the risks of avalanches...
It is then the development of the "Three Valleys" site (Saint-Bon, Les Allues and Bellevilles) that is recommended. The same year in a German camp, Laurent Chappis,
young Savoyard architect and town planner, a prisoner of war, also worked on the future
equipment for this ski area. With a fellow prisoner, Maurice Michaud,
engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées in Savoie, they elaborate a plan of ski lifts
and accommodation ideally distributed over the territory.
1946 : BIRTH OF THE RESORT
In 1946, under the impetus of the Savoie Department, the municipality of Saint-Bon agreed to cede the communal land necessary for the construction of a new winter sports resort in the Alps. 1946 was the year of the construction of the access road between Courchevel and Les Tovets, the first hotels (Hôtel Départemental des Trois Vallées, chalet-hotel de la Loze) and the first ski lifts (Loze and Les Tovets lifts). Since then, the resort has continued to evolve and structure itself thanks to the construction of major facilities such as the altiport, the Croisette, Aquamotion...
THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME "COURCHEVEL
This name comes from the local soil - "ecortzevé" in Saint-Bon patois means "skinned" - and designates a place
and designates a place at 1500 m of altitude where the young shepherds were vigilant with the calves tempted by the springtime growth of the green and drusy blades of grass, fatal to their tongue...
After several hesitations with the name "Tovets" because the station is built on the plateau of Tovets. But the name "Tovets" is not very commercial so the resort is named Courchevel.
COURCHEVEL : SPORTS RESORT
In 1992, Courchevel hosted the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville. This sporting tradition continues
with the women's alpine skiing and ski jumping world cup, the Tour de France, the junior figure skating grand prix
figure skating and the numerous galas.
The mountain is also the summer with hiking, horseback riding, climbing and mountain biking.