Mont Bleu Ski Area

Mont Bleu Ski Area near Lawrence, Kansas, was the state's first ski area, cut into the north face of Blue Mound, a lone wooded hill about two miles southeast of town and just south of Highway 10. The mound rises about 230 feet above the farmland around it. Emigrants on the Oregon and California trails used it as a landmark, and free-state Lawrence kept lookouts on it in the Bleeding Kansas years. Mont Bleu Inc., a corporation of Topeka business and professional men with R. H. Dunaway and Dr. William Triplett as its developers, built the area in 1965 and gave the hill a French name for some Alpine flavor.

Kansas could not be counted on for snow, so the whole plan rested on making it. Water pumped from the Wakarusa River into settling ponds fed a network of buried pipes, and air-and-water guns blew snow over the slope on cold, dry nights. The first season was the winter of 1965 to 1966. By the late 1960s there were three runs on a slope about a quarter mile long, a rope tow, a ski school, a lodge with a fireplace, a snack bar and rental shop, and lights for night skiing. KU students filled many of its jobs, and skiers came from Kansas City, Topeka and as far as Oklahoma City. A T-bar was promised in 1970, but skiers in 1978 were still holding a rope.

Warm winters and short seasons made money scarce. Walter Klammer, a Kansas City engineer, bought the area in 1975 and kept it going on borrowed money, including a second mortgage on his home. One warm winter it was open for only two weeks. By 1980 the downhill equipment was worn out, and a new operator reopened the hill for cross-country skiing instead. The area closed for good in 1983. A Colorado group sought permits to revive it in 1986, but no skiing came of it. Blue Mound is private land today, and the hill is still easy to pick out from Highway 10.