Enchanted Mountain Ski Area

Enchanted Mountain Ski Area near Jackman, Maine, sat on the slopes of Coburn Mountain in Upper Enchanted Township, about 12 miles south of Jackman off U.S. Route 201. A group of Jackman residents formed the Jackman Region Ski Corporation in 1963, hoping a ski area would bring winter business to a town that went quiet when the snow came. They leased about 1,600 acres from the Scott Paper Company in 1965. The plans unveiled in November 1964 were huge: three ski faces called Valley of the Moon, Secret Valley and Mystic Ridge, each with its own lodge, linked by a three-mile tramway and six double chairlifts.

What got built was much smaller. After months of chasing a federal loan, the company landed a Small Business Administration loan in February 1966, and the area opened on February 19, 1966, with a T-bar and a platter lift and a temporary lodge. A Samson double chairlift of about 4,200 feet and a two-story base lodge with a big stone fireplace followed for the 1966-67 season. The chair served a wide open slope under the lift and five or six narrow, winding trails fanning out from the summit. Brochures claimed a vertical drop as high as 1,800 feet; the later guides said 1,200, and lost ski area researchers put the real figure closer to 1,000. Ads promised the deepest snow and the shortest lift lines, and called the place the Switzerland of Maine.

The snow was real, and so was the isolation. Thin early seasons, a long access road and a small local market left the company short of money. The SBA foreclosed, and an auction on October 16, 1969, drew no bids. The agency sold the area to Terry Tyler, founder of Maple Valley in Vermont, and Willis and Robert LeFavour, who reopened it in February 1970 and tried nighttime snowshoe tours, free bunks in the lodge for anyone who brought a sleeping bag, and free skiing for season pass holders from other Maine areas. Bigger resorts at Sugarloaf and Saddleback kept growing, and there is no record of Enchanted Mountain running after the 1972-73 season.

The area was advertised for sale in 1973, and the SBA moved to liquidate it in 1974. The lifts and the lodge came down, and the trails grew in. Snowmobiles and ATVs still use some of the old runs, a logging project in the early 2010s erased most of the lower slopes, and a hiking trail from the old parking lot on Enchanted Mountain Road climbs to the summit of Coburn Mountain.