(CNN) -- Jeff Kohnstamm had a bit of an unusual childhood. He grew up in a virtual museum.





Even now when he wanders around the lobby at Oregon's iconic Timberline Lodge, Kohnstamm, 47, sometimes flashes back to being a kid on a tricycle, winding his way around original furniture designed by Depression-era artisans.





For Kohnstamm, whose family has operated the federally owned property for a half century, the Mount Hood ski lodge has become a living scrapbook of his life.





From birth until college he divided his days between school in neighboring Portland and Timberline -- with its rustic stone masonry, massive wooden beams, paintings, wood marquetry, custom wrought iron accoutrements and linoleum murals.





"There are museum aspects of this place, and I suppose the government could say, 'let's make it into a museum and have ropes and glass and charge admission,' but we'd rather it be a ski lodge than a museum."





Since its birth in the late 1930s as a New Deal project to create hundreds of jobs for Portland workers, craftsmen and artisans, Timberline has dug out its own place in American culture.





But it also bills itself as America's only year-round ski area.





'Heeeeere's Johnny!'





And, if the photos strike you as familiar, it may be because Timberline has built a respectable resume as a location for films such as "Bend of the River," starring Jimmy Stewart, "All the Young Men," starring Sydney Poitier and the horror classic "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson.





In a way, you could say the Timberline played the starring role in that 1980 film.





The lodge stood as the haunted Overlook Hotel, but only in exterior shots. All interior scenes were shot elsewhere, said Kohnstamm, who helped the film crew during the shoot.





"I did some work outside for the crew's helicopter shots," he said. "We'd have to make sure that the place looked desolate and that no one was around. I remember hiding in the trees so they could get the shots."





Growing up at the lodge for Kohnstamm meant making fast friends with children of guests who vacationed there every year. It was the place where he enjoyed his first legal beer on his 21st birthday -- in the lodge's Ram's Head Bar with its breathtaking view of the Cascade Mountains.





The site for hundreds of guests' weddings over the years, Timberline was where Kohnstamm's own younger brother chose to tie the knot.





It was where his late father announced the Christmas Eve arrival of Santa and a pair of authentic reindeer for guests' wide-eyed children. "I still kinda think it was really Santa Claus," he laughs. "Why not?"





Night skiing





But as one might expect, so much about growing up at Timberline revolved around skiing.





Kohnstamm learned to ski at age 3. Later, he says, to get them away from the TV, "my mom would make us go out and ski for at least an hour before we could watch football."





"At one point during adolescence we convinced Dad that it would be a good idea to ski all night long on New Year's," he said. "It got kind of crazy for a while there. We had all these people skiing and sleeping and whatever all over the place."





Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Timberline came uncomfortably close to being destroyed before Kohnstamm's father began operating it in 1955.





Four previous operators hadn't had much success running the lodge, and in 1953, the U.S. Forest Service thought of Timberline as more of a headache than anything else, Kohnstamm said.





Options at the time included either burning it or dismantling it until Kohnstamm's father, R.L. Kohnstamm, entered the picture. The family's permit to operate Timberline expires in 2038.





'You've really got something big here'





Local snowboarding entrepreneur John Ingersoll remembers R.L. Kohnstamm, who passed away in 2006, as a visionary.





Ingersoll founded High Cascade
Where is the Timberline ski lodge? Who trained in Mount Hood ?
Oregon's Kohnstamm
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