Mill Ridge Ski Area

Mill Ridge Ski Area near Foscoe, North Carolina, sat off Highway 105 in Watauga County, about eight miles southwest of Boone and between Boone and Banner Elk. It was part of a residential and vacation community of the same name, and its brochure address was a Banner Elk route box. Reader accounts credit a local builder with cutting the slope and starting the area, with a staff hire in October 1970, though sources disagree on the opening: one ski history site says 1970, a regional magazine says 1974, and one reader remembers building the slope in 1968 or 1969.

The hill was small and easy. One ski history writer put it at about seven acres of short, mostly gentle trails, and a former owner's daughter counted five runs, the steepest named Go For It. A 1982 brochure map shows a double chair, a mini lift and a pony lift, plus a lodge with a restaurant upstairs, a National Ski Patrol building, and a clubhouse, pool, tennis courts and lake in the valley below. Readers remember a short, uncrowded hill good for learning, with snowmaking and later night skiing.

Ownership changed over the years. Former owners recall that it changed hands in the mid-1970s and again in the early 1980s, when the last owner added to the lodge, snowmaking, restaurant and bar. After several warm winters with little snow the ski operation shut down. Closing dates vary: one reader says a nearby ski area bought its rental equipment around 1989 or 1990, another last skied there in 1990, and one ski history site says it ran until 1995 after a local businessman's last attempt to keep it going failed. A bigger hill about five minutes up the road, with roughly twice the terrain, is blamed in that account.

Today the old slopes are walking trails in the Mill Ridge community, the old lodge is a vacation rental, a rusted lift bull wheel sits near the top and old red lift chairs decorate some homes. The land is private property.