Aspen Highlands in 1974. Ron Hoffman/Wikimedia. When the Aspen Skiing Company wanted to raise its lift ticket prices from $10 to $12 in 1975, it had to ask the US Forest Service for permission. When Aspen residents wanted to fight the proposed price increase, they wrote letters to their local forest supervisor. That’s the way ski business was done half a century ago: through a federal intermediary. Most ski resorts in the western United States operate under Forest Service permits, and in the 1970s, politicians, national forest employees, skiers, and ski resort owners all recognized that the agency had a mandate to regulate the prices charged by private companies on public land.…