Gunset Ski Area
Richfield Springs, New York
Shop Gunset Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Early settlers named Gunset Hill for the guns they set on it for bears. The ski shop rented wood or metal skis on a rent-to-own plan, and the listed vertical drop grew from 275 feet in 1963 to 340 in 1980, though the hill never moved. Browse the styles below, and the full Gunset 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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Gunset Ski Area History
Gunset Ski Area near Richfield Springs, New York, sat on the north face of Gunset Hill, about a mile west of the village on US Route 20. The hill, 1,742 feet at the top, got its name from the early settlers, who set guns on it for the bears that were said to be thick there. The ski area was running by the 1963 season, when a guidebook listed a 1,500-foot Poma lift, a 900-foot rope tow, four intermediate trails, a novice trail and a ten-acre beginner slope, with a canteen selling sandwiches and soup. Lewis Whipple was the manager then, and a J. B. Whipple signed the area's listing as manager in the early 1970s.
Gunset was a small, practical hill. By the 1970s it ran two Pomalifts and a rope tow from a chalet by the parking lot, with a beginner slope, five intermediate slopes and trails and one expert trail, most of them spilling out onto one wide open slope at the bottom. It opened on holidays, weekends and some weeknights under lights, stayed open every day from mid-December through New Year's Day except Christmas, and ran a ski school and a ski shop that rented wood or metal skis on a rent-to-own plan. The listed vertical drop was 275 feet in 1963, 310 in 1973 and 340 in 1980, though the hill itself had not moved.
Guidebooks still listed Gunset in 1982, and skiers who learned there remember it closing in the early 1980s. The cleared slope stayed in use for tubing and snowmobiling, and the Richfield Springs Winter Carnival held a family day of snowmobile obstacle races and tube races there in 1999. In 2003 the lift line could still be seen from Route 20.