One thousand competitors from 34 nations came to Squaw Valley to compete in the VIII Olympic Winter Games of 1960, brought there by Alexander C. Cushing and commemorating a century of sport skiing in America. By 1860, mining towns in the Sierra Nevada, particularly Whiskey Diggings, Poker Flat, Port Wine, Onion Valley, La Porte, and Johnsville, had seen the first organized ski clubs and competition in the western hemisphere.