Lassen Park Ski Area
Mineral, California1935-1994
Browse Lassen Park Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The Supan family put in a rope tow and a warming hut at the park's southwest entrance in 1935, the year Highway 36 was finished. In 1982 a triple chairlift called Bumpass Heaven went in, and attendance set records for three years. Choose a style below, and the full Lassen Park 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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Lassen Park Ski Area History
Lassen Park Ski Area in Lassen Volcanic National Park, near Mineral, California, was a rare ski hill run inside a national park. Skiing at the southwest entrance goes back to the 1920s, when the Supan family, who owned a private plot near Sulphur Works, opened a small ski area. The Mt. Lassen Ski Club held competitions there in the early 1930s, and with Highway 36 finished in 1935 the Supans added a rope tow and a warming hut. The park bought the Supan land in 1952 and gave a concessioner the winter sports operation, with a single platter tow added in 1956.
The hill grew with the park's winter traffic. The ski boom around 1960 sent record numbers of skiers to the park, and winter visits topped 44,000 in 1965, more than 17,000 of them downhill skiers. An A-frame chalet went up near the lift in the 1960s, with dates of 1962 and 1964 given by different sources. By the late 1970s the concessioner offered a platter lift, two rope tows and six marked runs, a cafeteria, ski school, rentals and a ski shop, and use rose after the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl closed in 1978.
In 1982 a triple chairlift, called Bumpass Heaven, was installed, and the area began running seven days a week. Attendance set records for three years. Then poor snow years and new ski resorts opening nearby took their toll, and by 1990 downhill skier numbers were under a third of what they had been five years earlier. The National Park Service says the concessioner announced the area would not open for the next winter, which makes 1994 the last season. Other accounts give 1992 or 1993.
The park removed the chairlift foundations in 1999 and restored the slope to its pre-development condition in 2003. The chalet was condemned and taken down in 2005, and the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center opened on its site in 2008.