1960 Winter Olympics which made its selection to host the 1960 Winter Olympics a surprise. Wayne Poulsen and Alexander Cushing, who were inspired to an Olympic bid by a newspaper article mentioning that Reno, Nevada, and Anchorage, Alaska, had expressed interest in the Games. Poulsen, president of the Squaw Valley Development Company, petitioned California Governor Goodwin Knight to support a bid to host the Olympic Games. Knight's administration agreed and recommended that the California Legislature appropriate $1,000,000 to the effort. Based on the financial support received from the State of California, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) approved the bid on January 7,
Winter Olympic Games competition at the age of 15. She became the youngest Olympic champion in history, a distinction she held for 70 years. The next Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York, was the first to be hosted outside of Europe. Seventeen nations and 252 athletes participated. This was less than in 1928, as the journey to Lake Placid, United States, was long and expensive for most competitors, who had little money in the midst of the Great Depression. The athletes competed in fourteen events in four sports. Virtually no snow fell for two months before the Games, and there was