James Niehues

James Niehues (born 1946) is an American landscape artist and cartographer best known for painting ski trail maps for ski resorts. He has painted 255 maps for 175 ski resorts around the world. These maps take him many months to complete and they are all done by himself and by hand.

Early life Niehues was raised on a farm in Loma, Colorado, He began painting at the age of 15, when he fell ill with nephritis and his mother gave him an oil painting set to keep him occupied while he was bedridden for three months.

Career After serving in the U.S. Army from 1965 to 1969, Brown gave him his first assignment as a map painter: a small inset map commissioned by Winter Park Resort in Colorado. After his map was accepted by Winter Park, Niehues printed copies of his illustration and sent them to the marketing managers of ski resorts across the U.S. to advertise his map-painting services. The first resort to respond was Vail Ski Resort, which hired him to paint a new trail map. The first ski map that he designed and painted by himself was Boreal Mountain Resort in California; as of 2016, Niehues' map was still in use, 29 years after it was created. He retired completely in 2021.

Niehues' method of painting ski trails begins with aerial photographs of the mountain that he either takes himself or obtains from Google Earth.

By 2016, Niehues had painted 255 maps for 175 ski resorts around the world. The largest resorts he has painted for include Aspen, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Copper Mountain and Winter Park in Colorado, Big Sky Resort in Montana, Boyne Mountain Resort in Michigan, Killington Ski Resort in Vermont, Mount Bachelor in Oregon, Sugarloaf in Maine, and Mont Tremblant Resort and Whistler Blackcomb in Canada. In 2011, his work was displayed in an exhibition at Apexart in New York City. and lives in Loveland, Colorado. and the "Norman Rockwell of ski resorts".