Big Devil Ski Area

Big Devil ski area near Washington, Virginia, sat in Harris Hollow a few miles northwest of town, on a north-facing slope of the Blue Ridge in Rappahannock County. The hill went by three names. It opened to the public as Skyline Ski Area, became Big Devil, and ended as Rappahannock Ski Area. Across the valley is Big Devils Stairs, a gorge in Shenandoah National Park and the likely source of the devil name.

A 1965-66 Skyline brochure listed a 2,100-foot Hall T-bar, three rope tows, snowmaking, and about 25 acres of slopes, with a run called Catamount dropping about 500 feet. Weekend tickets cost $5. Workers from those years remembered rope tows driven off old truck wheels and a lodge built around a large round fireplace. A 1972 brochure called the place about ten years old, which fits an account that the land was bought in 1962. Older stories of a private club for Washington officials in the 1950s have never been pinned down.

The Big Devil name was in use around 1970. No firm start or end date for it has turned up. By then a Pullman-Berry double chair stood on the hill. In 1972 the Camelback Ski Corporation of Tannersville, Pennsylvania, bought the area, renamed it Rappahannock, added a 2,000-foot Borvig double chair and night skiing, and advertised about 650 feet of vertical on trails such as Big Cobbler, Piedmont Pike and Honeysuckle Hollow. When Camelback arrived, a court was still deciding who owned the chairlift already standing on the hill.

The winter of 1973-74 brought rain and thaws, and the snowmakers rebuilt the cover from bare ground seven times. The gas shortage kept city skiers home. Camelback announced around March 1, 1974, that the area was bankrupt, and it did not reopen. The lifts and equipment were hauled off, the land was sold, and the slopes grew back into woods.