Birch Haven Ski Area
Sauk City, Wisconsin
Order Birch Haven Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Three rope tows pulled skiers up about 275 vertical feet midway between Sauk City and Baraboo, Wisconsin. The hill was first known as Suicide Hill, and the brochure said the name Birch Haven came from 55 acres of birch trees. A day ticket cost adults $3.00. Browse the styles below, and the full Birch Haven history is further down. We are an American small business bringing back the signs and logos of places and teams that are long gone but remembered fondly.
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Birch Haven Ski Area History
Birch Haven Ski Center near Sauk City, Wisconsin, sat on Sauk County Highway C about a mile and a half west of U.S. Highway 12, midway between Sauk City and Baraboo. The Badger Ordnance plant lay a couple of miles to the east. Its own brochure said the area took its name from 55 acres of birch trees, and the Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project records that the hill was first known as Suicide Hill and that skiing there began around 1954.
Three rope tows pulled skiers up a vertical drop of about 275 feet. The brochure described three open slopes with runs up to 1,800 feet and a set of wooded trails: Ridge Trail, the numbered Birch Trails, Woodin Bowl, West Trail and East Bowl, with Suicide Slope and a bunny area near the bottom. A newspaper sketch of the layout added a toboggan run, a skating pond and a club house. The area ran in the evenings as well as by day, charged adults $3.00 for a day ticket, rented skis, boots and poles, ran ski school classes at 11 and 2, and sold lunches at a snack bar. Birch Haven Ski Center, Inc. took its mail at a post office box in Sauk City.
Birch Haven never added snowmaking. A statewide list in December 1970 still carried it with three tows, three runs and ice skating, and it appears on a 1971 Wisconsin ski map but not on the 1972 edition. A lost-ski-area page posted photos in 2018 showing a rope tow pole still standing on the old slope.