Jesse Ritner

Public history

History belongs to the people who lived it, and to everyone who wants to read it.

I specialize in oral history and digital public history. I collect the stories of outdoor recreation and ski-industry workers, and I edit, write, and build for audiences outside the academy, online and in print.

2

oral history projects

39

interviews recorded

3

publications edited

230K+

annual NiCHE views

On this page: Oral history · Editing · Digital projects · Social media · Training

Oral history

Outdoor Recreation Workers Oral History Project logo

Lead Researcher · 2025–present · with the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, BYU

Outdoor Recreation Workers Oral History Project

Recording the lives of people with 30+ years in skiing, rafting, climbing, guiding, and other recreation work across the West, for preservation in BYU Special Collections.

Read about the project →

2019–2026 · dissertation and book research

Ski Industry Oral History Project

The two major oral history collections on skiing, at the University of Utah and the Denver Public Library, focus on skiers and ski culture. This collection focuses on members of the ski industry and the communities around it. After Snowguns is complete, I plan to donate these 35 interviews to an archive for other historians.

See all 35 interviews

2026

  • Gordon Briner, Former CEO of Taos Ski Valley, Tucson, AZ

2025

  • Seth Masia, Former Journalist at Ski and Skiing, El Jebel, CO

2024

  • Magdeleno Diaz, Cora Community Leader, Gunnison, CO

2022

  • Shawn Mulford, Diné Elder & Activist, Flagstaff, AZ
  • Klee Benally, Diné Activist & Artist, Flagstaff, AZ
  • Andy Bessler, Former Sierra Club Project Leader & Activist, Flagstaff, AZ
  • Roxane George, Founder of Flagstaff Activist Network, Flagstaff, AZ

2021

  • Robert Berlin, Ski/Climate Journalist, Krem, Austria
  • Al Kryger, CEO of Greek Peak Ski Area, Cortland, NY
  • Brian Tito Alex, CEO of Snowmaking Efficiency, LLC, Bozeman, MT
  • Joe Clark, Mountain Manager, Buttermilk Ski Resort, Basalt, CO
  • Beatriz Soto, Protéjete Director at Conservation Colorado & leader of Defiende Nuestra Tierra, Carbondale, CO
  • Samuel Bernal, Spanish Radio Host & Community Advocate, Glenwood Springs, CO
  • Lisa Robiano, Nurse Practitioner and Health Advocate, Basalt, CO
  • Rob Stein, Superintendent of Roaring Fork Public Schools, Basalt, CO
  • Billy Rankin, Avalanche Forecaster & Educator, Crested Butte, CO
  • Don Bachman, Avalanche Researcher & Educator, Bozeman, MT
  • Ted Beeler, Former President of Sno-Engineering, Seattle, WA
  • Rod Newcomb, Founder of American Avalanche Institute, Jackson, WY
  • Knox Williams, Founder of Colorado Avalanche Information Center, Cedaredge, CO
  • Betsy & Richard Armstrong, Avalanche Researchers and Educators, Fraser, CO
  • Robert Akland, Former CEO of Mad River Glen Ski Area, Warren, VT
  • Joseph VanderKelen, President of Snow Machine International, Midland, MI
  • Ron Ratkin, President of Ratkin Industries, Rochester, NY
  • Brian Fairbanks, President of Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, Hancock, MA
  • Karl Birklan, Head of National Avalanche Information Center, Bozeman, MT
  • Wayne Hare, Skier/CEO of Civil Conversation Project, Grand Junction, CO

2020

  • Ethan Green, Head of Colorado Avalanche Information Center, Leadville, CO
  • Peter Alford, President of Alford Design Group, Denver, CO
  • Travis Benson, Mountain Manager at Buttermilk Ski Area, Aspen, CO
  • Michael Krongel, Former CFO of American Ski Company, Newton, MA
  • Chris Diamond, Former CEO of Steamboat Springs Ski Resort, Steamboat Springs, CO
  • Michael Berry, Former President of National Ski Areas Association, Boulder, CO
  • Cathy Rosen, Skier, Wynnewood, PA

2019

  • Auden Schendler, Former Vice President of Sustainability, Aspen, CO

Editing

NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment

Editor · 2024–present · 230,000+ views a year

NiCHE is a Canadian-based confederation of scholars of environmental history, environmental humanities, and historical geography. It publishes for a general audience, with an emphasis on, but not limited to, Canada.

I plan and edit original series, working directly with authors on content and writing style and formatting posts. Submissions have included essays, playable tabletop games, and multimedia video. I also edit other submissions, attend meetings, and publish my own work.

Series · 2025–2026

Playing Inside: Board Games, Video Games & the Indoors

How playing indoors shapes our relationship with the environment, and how the stories, images, and sounds of games can teach history. Eleven contributions:

  • Jake Breadman, “Cardboard Battlefields in 1812: The Invasion of Canada”
  • Nolan Reynolds, “Playing the Vanishing Frontier: Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Environmental Imagination”
  • John W. Bessai, “Playing Inside the Grid: Bear 71, Do Not Track, and Life Under Observation”
  • Jason Newton, “Seeing like a Peon: Warcraft and Perspective in Forest History”
  • Adeline K. Piercy, “Controlling Catastrophe: Indoor Gameplay to Support Sensory Dysfunction”
  • Candice Allmark-Kent, “Indoors or… What is indoors?: Unsettling Settlements in Fallout 4”
  • Sherri Sheu, “Board Appeal: Curating Environmental Game Collections for the Public”
  • Desiree Valadares, “The 1966 Motorific Alcan Highway Torture Track”
  • Scout Blum, “Diverse Environments Rules: A Card Game about Diversity in Environmentally-Themed Board Games”
  • Jacob Tom, “History on the Tabletop: A Brief Guide for Evaluating Historical Board Games”
  • Jessa Dahl, “Digital Translations and Playable Space: Ready, Set, Yokohama!”

Series · 2026 · co-edited with M. Blake Butler

The Winter Olympics & Their Environments

Where the Winter Games meet their natural and built environments, from snow and ice to climate change and the long effort to control winter conditions. It ran alongside the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Radical Hope Syllabus

Social Media Director & Assistant Editor · 2021–2023

A resource for anyone interested in environmental issues, framing how we might learn about our most pressing environmental problems and respond to them, collectively or individually. I edited content, maintained the website, and ran social media campaigns on Twitter (now X) and Instagram.

Not Even Past

Assistant Editor · 2018–2019

A digital public history magazine founded in 2010 by the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. I edited and solicited content, managed and maintained the website, ran social media campaigns on Twitter (now X) and Instagram, and contributed frequently as an author.

Digital projects

The Lift Line

The Lift Line: A History Blog

Founder & Editor · 2020–2024

I created The Lift Line as part of a larger project, using it to work through current research. It offers critical histories of skiing that ski magazines, blogs, and websites rarely cover, connecting skiing to broader historical trends and using it to read the past.

Popular posts:

Frederic Allen Williams: A Citizen Artist with a Magic Lantern

Digital archive · 2018 · ALA Best Historical Materials list (with other participants)

Built through The Public Archive at UT Austin under Dr. Joan Neuberger. With UT librarians, we identified collections that were not yet public, from the Harry Ransom Center and other campus archives, and digitized them. I then wrote blog-essays on the Williams lantern slides, created high school and undergraduate lesson plans, and built a website to share it all openly.

Find

Identify and digitize unpublished collections

Write

Blog-essays for curious readers

Teach

K–12 and college lesson plans

Share

An open, browsable archive

Social media

Most Americans engage with history through museums, documentaries, and podcasts, not social media. Still, social media lets museums, archives, and historical societies share collections with people who might never visit in person. It turns history into a two-way conversation, inviting the public to contribute family photos, memories, and local knowledge, and it gives historians a place to model careful interpretation where many people now encounter the past.

Since 2026 I have run social media for the GCSU History Department (@history_gcsu). In my public history course, students create one photo post and one video post focused on Milledgeville, Georgia. They learn to communicate history to a broad audience and to work with platform algorithms, and the department becomes a source of local history.

Earlier: Radical Hope Syllabus (2021–2023), ClioVis (2021–2023), Not Even Past (2018–2019).

Training & other public work

Workshops & coursework

  • Applied History Workshop, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023
  • Oral History Workshop, American Society for Environmental History, Eugene, OR, 2022
  • Master Class in Environmental History and Museums, University of Stavanger, Norway, 2019
  • Public and Digital History, University of Texas at Austin, 2019
  • Oral History Workshop, Texas State Historical Association, Austin, TX, 2018

Other public roles

  • Historical Consultant, Civil Conversation Project, Denver, CO, 2021–2025
  • Profiles in Diversity, College of Natural Sciences, UT Austin, 2022–2023
  • Handbook of Texas Women Summer Research Fellow, Texas State Historical Association
  • Historic Preservationist, National Park Service, 2016–2017

Digital skills: WordPress · blog editing · StoryMaps · ClioVis · digital mapping (MyMaps, Carto, QGIS) · optical character recognition · social media storytelling (X/Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook)