Hogback Ski Area

Hogback Ski Area in Marlboro, Vermont, ran on the eastern face of Mt. Olga beside Route 9, about sixteen miles west of Brattleboro on the old Molly Stark Trail. The ground came from Harold White, who ran the Marlboro Tavern, a restaurant and a gift shop at the highway's summit overlook. In April 1946 members of the Brattleboro Outing Club incorporated Hogback Mountain Ski Lift, Inc. and sold $10 shares to pay for a diesel-powered T-bar with a 475-foot vertical drop. A local columnist grumbled about the plain name. The lift ran free for an hour on January 23, 1947, and the area opened to the public two days later with five trails.

It grew in steps. A rope tow went onto the practice slope, and a platter lift and new trails on the Route 9 side opened in 1955-56. The Alpenglo Lodge, with a cafeteria and fireplace, was finished for 1961-62. Two electric T-bars arrived in 1964-65, and the platter lift was replaced by another T-bar in 1969-70, which left four T-bars and about fifty acres of skiing. Hogback was a family hill with no snowmaking, free lessons for the local elementary schools, and a reputation for low prices. In the 1960s the ski school taught short skis, and Hogback's instructor Clif Taylor wrote a 1961 book on the method. In the 1970s the area called itself the biggest little area in New England, and its ads in those years showed a cartoon pig in a knit cap carrying a pair of skis.

Arnold White was general manager and ran the area through the 1980s as insurance costs rose and natural snow came late. The 1985-86 season was the last. In October 1986 the owners announced there would be no more skiing, saying the liability premium had grown larger than the area's yearly income. The restaurant and gift shop kept going. A plan for a four-season resort in 1987 drew local opposition and was dropped, and the property was auctioned in 1993.

A group of local citizens formed the Hogback Mountain Conservation Association in 2006, and by 2010 the land had been protected and given to the Town of Marlboro. Several T-bars still stand in the woods, and some of the old trails are kept open for hiking and backcountry skiing.