Snowmass Village is a home rule municipality in Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The population was 2,826 at the 2010 census. A popular winter resort location for skiing and snowboarding, the town is well known as the location of the Snowmass ski area, the largest of the four nearby ski areas operated collectively as Aspen/Snowmass. In 2010, the accidental discovery by a bulldozer operator of fossilized elements of a Pleistocene ecosystem in the ice age lake bed at the Ziegler Reservoir (commonly referred to as the Snowmastodon site) put Snowmass Village prominently on the paleontological map of North America. Geography Snowmass Village is located at (39.214104, -106.945288). According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and (0.35%) is water. Snowmass Village is to the north and at the base of the Snowmass Ski Area. It is located on Brush Creek, not Snowmass Creek. Within the area of the town, Owl Creek and Brush Creek join and then flow north into the Roaring Fork River. Visible from the village from east to west are Burnt Mountain Ridge, Burnt Mountain, Baldy Mountain, Chapel Peak, Garret Peak, Clark Peak, Mount Daly, and Capitol Peak. Neither Snowmass Mountain nor Snowmass Peak, at the headwaters of Snowmass Creek, are visible from Snowmass Village. The geologic unit Mancos Shale underlies most of the area. On slopes too steep for vegetation, this shale is visible as gray expanses of eroding bedrock. On south-facing slopes, the alkaline soil that develops from the shales supports Gambel oak, sagebrush, serviceberry, and chokecherry. The north-facing slopes feature aspen, subalpine fir, Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, and blue spruce. The area around Snowmass Village has abundant wildlife including black bears which feed on the acorns and berries of the south-facing slopes. History The Brush Creek Valley was settled circa 1910 by ranching families including: Sinclair, Melton, Stapleton, and Hoaglund. As a child, Hilder Hoaglund would ride her horse into Aspen to go to school. Her father, Charles Hoaglund, immigrated from Sweden in the 1800s. After a school was built in Brush Creek valley, she attended the Brush Creek Frontier School, now called the Little Red Schoolhouse, located on Owl Creek Road. She became a teacher at that school and then at the Red Brick School in Aspen. At the schoolhouse, she played the accordion or piano for community dances. When she married