Local vicar Josef Ruden convinced Zermatt’s citizens not to sell their best land to outside investors as mountaineers began flocking to the village following the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. Instead, in 1876, the village’s burghers, families with hereditary rights in the commune, agreed to build a hotel themselves, contributing their own labor for free to keep the project’s debt manageable in exchange for a permanent right to use the finished building.
Construction took three years, and the Grand Hotel Zermatterhof opened in 1879 with 94 rooms and 150 beds, immediately becoming the largest hotel at the foot of the Matterhorn and drawing European aristocracy to what had recently been a remote farming village. The same burgher families still hold a stake in the hotel today, a rare ownership structure for a five-star property. Walt Disney visited Zermatt and the Matterhorn decades later, an experience that directly inspired Disneyland’s Matterhorn Bobsleds ride, which opened in 1959 and remains one of the park’s signature attractions. Guests still arrive at the car-free village by horse-drawn carriage from the train station.