The main day lodge at Bogus Creek was built in 1962 and expanded in 1991; its ground floor contains the ticket office and ski lockers. In 2002 it was named for agribusiness magnate J. R. Simplot (1909–2008), because without him there might not be a Bogus Basin. When the fledgling ski area was struggling to pay its debts in 1953, Simplot bought its ski lifts and other mountain improvements from the Kingcliffe Co. and leased them back to the Bogus Basin Recreational Association for $1,500 per year for ten years. His intervention averted almost certain financial demise and won the everlasting gratitude of a generation of skiers. Simplot was later the driving force behind Brundage Mountain northwest of McCall, which opened in November 1961.