Braddock Heights Ski Area

Braddock Heights Ski Way in Braddock Heights, Maryland, ran on Catoctin Mountain a few miles west of Frederick, in an old trolley resort town named for General Edward Braddock, whose army crossed the mountain in 1755. The owner of the Schley Inn, a hilltop hotel, opened a small ski slope behind it in 1962 after deciding that a snowmaking machine could make up for the mild winters. It began as Ski Way and took the town's name in 1966. Its early brochure called it a family ski slope, the Apple Strudel Run, under a picture of a red apple, a nod to the orchards of Frederick County.

A T-bar served a fan of easy and moderate trails, the longest about 1,200 feet, and a pair of rope tows flanked a shorter open run for beginners. SKI Magazine put the vertical at 200 feet from a base of 1,000 feet in 1978 and noted that most of the snow was made on site, with water drawn from the pond at the foot of the hill. The slope was an hour from Washington and Baltimore, and its busiest hours were the evening sessions from 6 to 10, when club, school, church and government recreation groups arrived, often with their own instructors. The lodge, renamed the General Braddock Inn in the 1970s, had 25 motel rooms and the 1755 Restaurant.

Late in the decade the area sold all-day lift tickets cut in the shape of a red apple and hung on a string, printed Braddock Heights Ski-Way, Apple Strudell Run. Warm winters wore the operation down, and it closed around 1980. Visitors walking the old trails in the 2000s found the T-bar's towers, cable and bullwheel still in place in the woods, along with the motor shed where some of the bars were stored.