In 1939, the Elmira Area Soaring Corp., the predecessor of Harris Hill Soaring Corp, had a paid full time manager named Maury Waters. His job was to raise operating funds for the EASC from the community so he could supervise an active promotion of soaring at Harris Hill, including contests and other activities, with the purpose that this area would continue to be called The Soaring Captial Of America. Maury's effort in 1939 was to broaden the activity at Harris Hill over a greater portion of the year.

He came up with the idea of having a contest over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Twenty-two pilots and 10 sailplanes entered in the contest including: Stan Corcoran with his Cinema IT, Floyd Sweet with his Rhonbussard, Stan Smith with his two-place side-by-side City of Utica, Bob Auburn with the SSA Schweizer 2-8 sailplane and two Franklins.

Most of the contest flights were from winch tow, although Pete Peters of Ithaca came down with his towplane and made a few tows. The competition was the total duration of all contest flights made by a pilot, and altitude. The best total duration of 4 hrs and 31 minutes was made by Bob Auburn in the SSA 2-place giving soaring flights to SSA members, and the best altitude was 500, above release by Floyd Sweet. Seven pilots made official flights. There was no entry fee or tow charges and a $240 prize fund was distributed among the pilots that scored points. A banquet was held in tne administration building.

In writing up the report of the contest for the December 1939 Soaring, Bob Auburn titled the report "Snowbird", for as usually happens some time during these meets, there were some snow flurries. This is how the contest got it's name. Ernie and I attended this contest, for we were just in the process of forming SAC and moving up from Peekskill, N.Y. to the Elmira Heights Knitting Mill where the Elmira Aviation Ground School was located.

With the increase in activity of many aviation people in preparing for a possible war, no Snowbird was held in 1941. Instead a "Keep Em Flying" contest was held at the Wurtsboro Gliderport on the weekend of Dec 6-7, 1941. It was during the meet on Sunday that Ginny Mayer, who was sitting in a car with the radio on, keeping the flight records, came running out shouting that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese. With war breaking out, sport flying was not permitted near the coasts and most soaring people were involved in the war effort, so no Snowbirds meets were held from 1941 thru 1945.

The Snowbirds were started again in 1946 and continued each year thereafter, so this year's 1997 snowbird was the fifty fifth. Over the years the size of the Snowbird meets has varied.

In the 1950s there was an international flavor, since many Canadian pilots attended to get ridge soaring experience. One year there were over twenty Canadians that attended.