Copple Crown Ski Area
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire1965-1970s
Shop Copple Crown Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. A 1968 newspaper ad sold couples a $25 weekend with lodging, five meals, a cocktail party and a tour of Wolfeboro, and called the hill a private mountain of pleasure. The old T-bar still stands among the overgrown slopes. Pick a style below, then read the full Copple Crown history further down. Down Home Apparel is an American small business remembering the best places and teams of yesteryear, and every shirt is printed to order in the USA.
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Copple Crown Ski Area History
Copple Crown Ski Area in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, ran on the slope of 1,868-foot Copple Crown Mountain, a few miles south of the lake town on Middleton Road, next to a vacation-home development of the same name. Skiers had used the mountain since at least the 1939-40 season, but the real ski area took years of false starts. A company called Copplecrown Resort, Inc. was filed in July 1963, and press accounts that fall promised a 2,000-foot T-bar and two rope tows. Neither the 1963-64 nor the 1964-65 season appears to have happened, and the state suspended the company's filing in January 1965.
Copple Crown opened for the 1965-66 season with a T-bar serving a 500-foot drop and a rope tow, with two intermediate and two expert trails cut from the top. NELSAP and a 1966 ski guide list it starting in 1966, and a ski history site gives December 30 as the 1966-67 opening day. A second rope tow may have come around 1967. The area also hosted the state ski championship, and a 1968 guide lists night skiing, a ski jump, tobogganing and ice skating. A three-mile cross-country trail was reported as well.
It was a private mountain with a sales pitch. Ads from 1968 to 1970 offered a one-day pass to anyone who wrote or called the developer, Town and Country Homes of Reading, Massachusetts, and a 1968 newspaper ad sold a $25 weekend for a couple, with lodging, five meals and a cocktail party, and a tour of Wolfeboro. The copy called it a private mountain of pleasure, and the year-round vacation homes started at $310 in the ad. The original developer sold out to Town and Country in January 1973, and a homeowner remembers that the mountain went bankrupt that year.
Operations grew sporadic. Homeowners say they pooled cash to open it for one season in 1978, the winter of the big blizzard, and sources agree it did not run much after that. NELSAP blames poor weather and high insurance rates. The old base lodge is now used by the neighborhood association, a conservation trust manages part of the mountain as a trail area, a home community still carries the name, and the golf course built on part of the old ski property goes by another name. The T-bar still stands among the overgrown slopes.