Long Mountain Ski Area
Nashville, Indiana1979-1982
Order Long Mountain Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Ron and Connie Long put the family name on nearly everything: the Longway and Longwood runs, the Pokalong beginner slope, the Ski-a-Long shop and the Long Branch lounge. In late November 1982 the IRS seized the resort over unpaid federal employment taxes. Browse the styles below, and the full Long Mountain 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.
5 products
Long Mountain Ski Area History
Long Mountain Ski Resort near Nashville, Indiana, sat about a mile southwest of town on State Road 46 in Brown County, across the road from the Little Nashville Opry. Ron Long, a Johnson County farm native with a doctorate in animal husbandry who had worked in the livestock breeding business, built it with his wife Connie after the family took up skiing on a trip to Colorado. Connie designed the buildings and the trail signs. Clearing started in early September 1979, and by the end of December the resort was nearly finished and waiting on cold weather.
The family name ran all through the place. The two main runs, each about 1,000 feet long, were Longway and Longwood. The beginner run was Pokalong, the ski shop was the Ski-a-Long, and the restaurant and lounge was the Long Branch. The hill had about 150 feet of vertical. A quad chairlift served the two main runs and rope tows served the beginner hill and the ski school slope, with snowmaking on all of it and lights for skiing until 10:30 at night.
The resort sat on a 155-acre tract known locally as the Berry Farm, which came with a 13-acre lake and a big stone barn that was remodeled into the rental shop, stocked to outfit about 1,000 skiers a day. The lodge measured 40 by 80 feet, seated 150 and had a massive stone fireplace, and visitors came in through an A-frame entrance with the name lettered on its face. Nashville Alps opened four miles west the same winter, and a warm January in 1980 left both new resorts running day by day.
By the fall of 1981 Long Mountain advertised six slopes and planned a December opening. A year later, in late November 1982, the Internal Revenue Service seized the resort for $41,326.79 in unpaid federal employment taxes from 1979 to 1981 and posted notices at the entrance, warning that it could be sold at public auction. The Brown County Democrat found no sign of preparations for another season, and no later season has been found. Nashville Alps, renamed Ski World in 1986, kept going until about 2002, but it was a different hill.