Robert Earl Holding was a billionaire entrepreneur who built Idaho's Sun Valley into a world-class resort and owned Sinclair Oil Corp.

He became a key figure in attracting the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City by building ski slopes and the city's most luxurious hotel.

Robert Earl Holding The Salt Lake Tribune

Mr. Holding, who died Friday at age 86, parlayed a struggling motel into an empire of ski resorts and hotels, oil refining and retailing, and real-estate holdings in Montana and Wyoming that placed him among the top landowners in the U.S. He was No. 139 on the Forbes list of U.S. billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion.

Raised in Salt Lake City, Mr. Holding was the son of an apartment maintenance man. His family lost their savings in the stock-market crash of 1929 and Mr. Holding remained reluctant to take on debt, even as his business empire blossomed. He trained as a civil engineer and worked at the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water-resource management.

Mr. Holding got his start managing Little America, a 60-room motel and gas station on Interstate 80 in Green River, Wyo., in the early 1950s. He converted the business into a heavily advertised truck stop. Targeting the developing interstate highway system, he opened more Little Americas in Arizona and Salt Lake City.

In the late 1960s, Mr. Holding moved into the gasoline business with the acquisition of an oil refinery in Casper, Wyo. He invested in pipelines and other gas operations, and in 1976, Sinclair. The company, sporting a dinosaur logo, sells gasoline through 2,700 stations in the West and Midwest.

Mr. Holding's 1977 acquisition of the Sun Valley Resort sparked local skeptics to speculate he would flip the resort. Instead, he initiated an overhaul. In 1984, he bought Snowbasin Resort, less than an hour's drive northeast of Salt Lake City, and built it into another top skiing destination that served as the host for downhill skiing races in the 2002 Olympics.

A trustee of the city's Olympic organizing committee, Mr. Holding built the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City to help accommodate international visitors in upscale splendor. But he resigned from the committee in 1999, citing conflicts of interest after a scandal erupted when his private jets were used to fly International Olympic Committee members. He also became the focus of controversy after Congress voted in 1998 to force the U.S. Forest Service to allot lands to Mr. Holding to help Snowbasin expand.

He was a longtime political supporter of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), who released a statement on Mr. Holding's death describing him as "a tremendous business and community leader, and a cherished friend."

Mr. Holding and his wife were known to bus tables at their ski resorts, and their children helped to run their hotels. Mr. Holding once even sliced open new pillows to be sure that they were filled with down, as advertised.