Boxboro Hills Ski Area

Boxboro Hills Ski Area in Boxborough, Massachusetts, was a small alpine and cross-country ski area on the hill above the Route 111 exit of Interstate 495. A large hotel and conference center opened at the interchange in 1975, and the area's trail map shows that hotel at the foot of the slopes. Hotel guests and the public both skied there. The ski area was running by the winter of 1977-78, when a local ad named the ski school director of Boxborough Hill Ski Area.

The hill was tiny. Guides in the early 1980s listed a vertical drop of 130 feet and a longest run of about 1,000 feet, served by a 1,000-foot T-bar and two rope tows. Beginner and intermediate slopes with names like The Chute and Telemark had snowmaking and night skiing, and the area offered rentals, lessons, a ski patrol and a snack bar.

Cross-country skiing was a big part of the draw, and the trail map billed the place as an alpine and cross-country touring center. In 1979 Boston papers described hundreds of acres of touring trails near the hotel grounds, and that February the trails hosted a cross-country ski marathon that raised money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

A 1987 ski map still showed the T-bar and both rope tows serving five trails and four slopes, and that was one of the area's last seasons, if not the last. The T-bar was later taken down and rebuilt at a city-owned ski hill in Marlborough, where skiers were still riding it in the 1990s. The hotel still stands. In the late 1990s the old base lodge sat unused beside it while brush grew over the slopes.