Montrose Ski Bowl

Montrose Ski Bowl in Montrose, Pennsylvania, was a town ski hill on the edge of the Susquehanna County seat, about 23 miles south of Binghamton. In the fall of 1940 three Binghamton men, attorney Joseph Berry, Harry L. Johnson Jr. and Percy Smith, picked out slopes with a northeast exposure near town, and A. J. Sordoni, the former state senator who owned the Montrose Inn, offered a gasoline engine and winch. By late November a 1,100-foot rope tow was in place, with a portable tow planned for beginners. The town launched a Ski at Montrose campaign, formed a ski club open to residents and visitors, and talked with the railroads about running snow trains. An early announcement called the hill the Montrose Snow Bowl, but Ski Bowl is the name that stuck. Some local memories put skiing on the hill back to the mid-1930s, but the first tow appears in the papers in 1940.

A club brochure titled Ski at Montrose billed the town as a winter playground some 2,000 feet above sea level. It described a main slope 1,500 feet long, averaging 20 degrees for 1,200 feet and sheltered from the wind by thick hemlocks, served by two large tows and a small portable one. There was a novice slope with an 800-foot tow, a 300-foot-wide slalom glade cut through the hemlocks, a Hemlock Trail, a Steep Trail and a set of wooded trails. The Montrose Ski Club built a rustic lodge at the foot of the bowl. In February 1941 the Montrose Inn and Hotel Neuman were filling with skiers from New York City, Binghamton, Endicott and Scranton, and a visiting New York club called the course the fastest it had tried that season.

After the war the area ran a Little Tow and a Big Tow, and a series of local operators kept it going. Elmer Taylor ran Taylor's North Hill Ski Shop at the hill, renting and selling skis. In February 1961 the Dallas Post reported excellent conditions at the Montrose Ski-Bowl, with signs on Route 29 pointing the way for drivers coming up from the south. In its later years many local skiers knew the hill as Spruce Run.

Skiing ended around 1970, though some skiers remember the tow running into the early 1970s. The slopes have grown back in. Photos from 2008 still show the line of the main slope cut through the evergreens, and the old motor house was reported standing that year in poor shape.