Mt. Grampian Ski Area
Oxford, Michigan1958-1988
Order Mt. Grampian Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Joseph Kosik, who went on to build or run Alpine Valley, Mt. Holly and Pine Knob, developed this hill of about 200 vertical feet near Oxford, Michigan. It added a Pomalift in 1959, a youth ski jump in 1961 and a double chairlift in 1971, and a good share of its skiers drove over from Windsor, Ontario. Browse the styles below, and the full Mt. Grampian history is further down. Down Home Apparel is an American small business remembering the best places and teams of yesteryear, and every shirt is printed to order in the USA.
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Mt. Grampian Ski Area History
Mt. Grampian near Oxford, Michigan, was a small ski hill on Lakeville Road in Addison Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit. It was developed by Joseph Kosik, a University of Michigan law graduate who went on to build or run Alpine Valley, Mt. Holly, Pine Knob and other Midwest ski areas. A local history records a $100,000 ski resort going up on Lakeville Road in 1957, and early skiers remember it running by that first winter. It shares its name with a mountain range in Scotland. The hill had about 200 feet of vertical.
Rope tows came first. In 1959 the area added a 1,000-foot Pomalift, and a youth ski jump went up beside the slopes in 1961, enlarged in 1963 with a 45-foot inrun tower. A 685-foot double chairlift was installed in 1971. By the mid-1970s Mt. Grampian ran the chair and six to eight rope tows, with lights and snowmaking, and SKI Magazine listed it as the smallest of the five Detroit-area hills. Much of its business came from the Detroit Free Press learn-to-ski program and from school ski clubs, and a good share of its skiers drove over from Windsor, Ontario.
To fill the off-season the owners added racquetball and tennis courts. The business went bankrupt in 1985, reopened for the 1987-88 winter with an opening day of November 20, 1987, and is last mentioned in 1988. Photos from 1991 show the lodge and chairlift standing empty. The buildings and lifts were later torn down, and the hill is private land, with the old parking lot still visible from Lakeville Road.