Holiday Hill Ski Area

Holiday Hill Ski Area near Yankton, South Dakota, ran on the wooded bluffs above the north shore of Lewis and Clark Lake, about six miles west of town off S.D. Highway 52. Two Yankton couples, Ed and Jean English and Bob and Nancy Burgess, filed incorporation papers just before Christmas 1962, and the hill was open for business by the first week of January 1963. It sat beside the year-old Timberlane golf course as part of a lakeside development called Holiday Village, and its backers promoted it as the first ski area in South Dakota east of the Missouri River.

The first winter brought four runs, the longest 2,200 feet with a 270-foot drop: an expert slope, two intermediates and a beginner slope called the Bunny Duster. A polypropylene rope tow pulled skiers up, and a rustic chalet with a big round fireplace sat at the bottom. Bob Burgess, a Yankton department store manager who had taught skiing to Army personnel in Germany, ran the ski school with help from Yankton College students from Vermont and New Hampshire.

The area grew quickly. A Small Business Administration loan paid for a new 36-by-64-foot chalet, which opened the day after Christmas 1964 with an upstairs dining room, a snack bar and fireplace, and a downstairs ski shop with 100 sets of rental equipment. The two main slopes were Buttermilk for beginners and Spotlight for stronger skiers, each with its own rope tow, plus three longer trails. Snow guns made snow when the sky didn't, the slopes were lit for night skiing on Thursdays and Fridays, and a weekend could bring 175 skiers. An all-day tow ticket cost $2.50.

The record goes quiet after January 1967, when the hill was running all three runs on a mix of machine-made and natural snow. By 1971 the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader described Holiday Hill as folded, and three young Minnesotans had bought much of its equipment for their new ski area outside Sioux Falls.