In the 1940s-1960s Ruka, downhill skiers skid on Ruka’s slopes in leather boots and wooden skis. The first descents on the cleared slope were made in the early winter of 1955. An internal combustion engine lift took skiers to the middle of the front slope for the first time in 1957.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Ruka’s elevator operation moved from a sports club operation to a business-led one. In the early winter of 1960, Osmo Saastamoinen and Lauri Määttä visited Austria to get to know the skiing centre and ski school operations. In the fall, a twice longer electric lift was installed to replace the previous 300-meter lift, which could be used as a chairlift in the summer.
The lift served on the front slope until 1970, when it was replaced by a two-person chair lift. The skiing hobby began to grow rapidly and in 1964 a long, gently sloping, and wide Vuosseli was opened on the eastern slope of Ruka.
Kuusamon Matkailu founded Rukatunturi Oy together with the travel agency Area and a few individuals. The company built the first real hotel in the centre in 1963. The stylish Rukahovi quickly became a prestigious hotel restaurant.
In the 1970s, most of the shares of Rukatunturi Oy was transferred to doctor Juhani Aho and it started the vigorous development of the Ruka ski centre. New slopes and lifts, such as Saarua, Pessari and Kelorinne, were built by the mid-1980s. The recession years of the 1990s stopped slope investments.
At the turn of the millennium, efforts were made to develop Ruka into a year-round international tourist centre. The parking garage was completed in 2008 and Ruka’s pedestrian village began to be built on top of it. An international tourist village and competition venue had been born.
The history of Kuusamo’s tourism is widely displayed in the tourism and culture centre Karhuntassu.