Nor-Ski Ridge Ski Area

Nor-Ski Ridge in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, was a downhill ski area on Highway 42 between Egg Harbor and Fish Creek in Door County. Harold "Wink" Larson built it. He had grown up ski jumping on the area's natural slopes and served on an Army ski patrol at Garmisch, Germany, and when he came home he set out to bring a real ski hill to the peninsula. He groomed the slopes, added rope tows and built a chalet on the old Lone Pine Hill ski jump site, and the area officially opened in 1959.

A brochure from about 1965 billed the hill as the highest point in Door County. Its map shows a T-bar, two rope tows, beginner, novice, intermediate and advanced runs, a 60-meter jump, a skating rink and a lookout tower on the summit. Later accounts count eight slopes and snowmaking. It was a family operation. Wink's wife Audrey ran the restaurant and the Alpine Sports Shop in the Nor-Ski Chalet, and relatives ran the lifts and peeled potatoes for summer fish boils on the grounds. The hill was home to the Gibraltar high school ski team, and Green Bay skiers and Chicago second-home owners came up for winter weekends.

In 1972 Larson sold the hill to a group of Milwaukee investors, who kept the Nor-Ski name for a few seasons. New owners Steve and Liz Kastner then renamed it Omnibus. SKI Magazine described Omnibus in December 1976 as a 226-foot hill with seven runs, a double chairlift, a T-bar and three rope tows, with touring trails linking to Peninsula State Park and folk or bluegrass music in the lodge on weekends. A later owner, Clemens Hedeen, who had skied Nor-Ski Ridge himself, first meant to keep the lifts running, but the land became Little Sweden, a resort and residential development that occupies the hillside today. Larson moved on to cherry orchards.