A golden retriever on a board behind a ski boat is a pretty convincing argument that you have arrived somewhere unusual.
Add a man flying over Lake Travis beneath a fireworks-lit kite, and Point Venture’s early sales pitch begins to sound almost restrained.
In our last installment, we met the people behind the resort’s beginnings. This month, the story moves beyond their plans and into the performances that made a visit memorable. It is one thing to promise a good time. It is another to give people a story they will still be telling decades later.
In 1971, 21-year-old Gary “Bubba” Brandenberger proposed teaching property owners’ children to water-ski and presenting shows. The developers paid the expenses. Sunday exhibitions drew spectators to Picnic Cove, where Brandenberger and friends built a ski ramp.
Think about the difference between looking at a resort brochure and watching young skiers perform. A brochure asks you to imagine yourself there. A show gives you a reason to stay a little longer.
And sometimes, the performer has four paws.
The community’s historical archive recalls teenage skier Mel Kurth teaching Sally, his golden retriever, to ride a board behind the boat. Imagine coming home from the lake and trying to explain that the dog had joined the ski show. Sally’s part in the story makes those early weekends feel a little closer: a young skier, his dog and a lake with room for both.
But the Saturday-night attraction took the spectacle considerably higher.
Brandenberger used a custom kite carrying Point Venture’s logo to rise above the lake behind a boat, with fireworks illuminating the display. The archive recounts an unexpected intervention: astronaut Alan Shepard, watching from Lakeway, contacted him about the danger. Brandenberger ended the nighttime act.
Shepard was America’s first astronaut in space and later walked on the Moon. When someone with that résumé questions your flight plan, there is probably a good reason to listen.
The ski shows continued through summer 1976.
Looking back, their appeal seems easy to understand. These were experiences people could watch together, talk about afterward and anticipate on another visit. The lake provided more than a view. It offered a setting where an ambitious promotion could become a shared memory.
For a new resort trying to make its name, that was a remarkable combination. For the people who were there, it was a weekend worth remembering.
Alan Shepard’s spaceflight and Apollo 14 history are documented in NASA’s biography.
