Berkshire Snow Basin Ski Area

Berkshire Snow Basin Ski Area in West Cummington, Massachusetts, sat on the north face of Bryant Mountain along Route 9, the Berkshire Trail. Stan and Ruth Brown, both ski racers, picked the spot after several winters of checking snow depths across western Massachusetts. They formed Ski Slopes, Inc. in June 1949 and opened for the 1949-50 season with two rope tows and a converted barn for a lodge. The trails were cut for a 550-foot drop, but the upper tow was not finished in time, and a lack of snow limited that first winter. Stan ran the ski school, his father kept the books, his mother and sister ran the cafeteria, and Ruth sold tickets. The upper tow and slope were added for 1952-53, giving the hill four rope tows.

Route 9 became the area's biggest problem. When the state moved the highway in 1958, the new road ran through the middle of the base area, cut the lodge off from the slopes and took much of the parking. For the winter of 1960, skiers climbed 28 steps, crossed the road and went down 28 steps to reach the lodge. The state later paid damages. A Small Business Administration loan paid for a new lodge by the slope in 1960-61, and in 1961-62 a 2,750-foot T-bar went in beside the College Highway slope, advertised as the longest T-bar south of Vermont. The 1960s brought more lifts, with two more T-bars by 1967-68, and the Browns made the ski area their full-time work. The trails carried names such as Rumpus Run, Steep Schuss, Merry-Go-Round, Ruthie's Run and Stan's Slalom.

Stan Brown died in April 1969. Ruth kept the area open and became one of the first women to manage a ski area in the country, with help from her father-in-law and sister-in-law. She skipped debt, stopped the little snowmaking the hill had, and ran it on natural snow through the 1970s. In the early 1980s the area was leased to a ski area nearby, then sat idle for the 1983-84 season. Ruth and her sister-in-law sold most of the ski assets in 1984, and the hill reopened with snowmaking under new owners who hoped to build a year-round resort. A bank took the property in 1987, and a development group ran two more seasons, adding telemark and snowboard events in 1988-89. The last day of skiing was probably in March 1989.

The lodge burned in September 1991, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts bought the 456-acre property in 1994. It is now part of Bryant State Forest, and a nonprofit backcountry group today uses the Berkshire Snow Basin name for open-access backcountry skiing on the old slopes. The last of the West T-bar came down in 2016.