Hahn Mountain Ski Area
Kempton, Pennsylvania1969-1984
Shop Hahn Mountain Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Hahn is German for rooster, so the red rooster in a ring was the logo when Robert Stavin bought the Kempton, Pennsylvania, hill at a sheriff's sale for $220,000 in December 1975. The area had begun as Big Valley, named by the farmer who built it for a television western he liked. Pick a style below, and the full Hahn Mountain history is 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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Hahn Mountain Ski Area History
Hahn Mountain Ski Area near Kempton, Pennsylvania, started out as Big Valley Ski Area, built on a Berks County farm beside the Pinnacle, north of the road that became Interstate 78. Paul Yerger, a farmer who ran a sawmill on the property, cut the trails himself in 1968 and 1969. He put up a double chairlift and a T-bar, added snowmaking and lights, and opened in December 1969 with about 500 feet of vertical. He took the name from a television western he liked.
A warm, rainy winter hurt the business. Yerger sold his shares in 1973, the company went broke, and in December 1975 Robert Stavin, an Allentown businessman who headed a fire-apparatus maker, bought the area at a sheriff's sale for $220,000. He renamed it for his company, Hahn. Hahn is German for rooster, so the new logo was a red rooster inside a ring. The new owners added a beginner rope tow on a slope called Rooster Run, brought in big Hedco snow machines and remodeled the lodge with a cocktail lounge.
The hill drew night skiers from Allentown, Reading and Kutztown. Management held weekend crowds to about 700, and a weekday lift ticket cost $8 in the 1980-81 season. In 1980 Stavin told a reporter the area had never made money and that he would not buy it again. The 1983-84 season was the last, and later talk of reopening came to nothing.
The lifts are gone. The lodge still stands on private land, badly decayed, and the pines planted along the lower trails have grown up over the slopes.