Ohoho Ski Area
West Woodstock, Connecticut1971 to 1987 or 1989
Shop Ohoho Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The name was Santa's chuckle, and every run carried a holiday name, including Mistletoe, Reindeer Run and Christmas Bells. The Connecticut hill ran upside down, with the Christmas Tree Lodge at the summit, so skiers skied down to start the day and rode the lifts back up to their cars. Pick a style below, and the full Ohoho 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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Ohoho Ski Area History
Ohoho Ski Area in West Woodstock, Connecticut, was a small ski hill in the state's quiet northeast corner, built from top to bottom around Christmas. Joe Campert, a Woodstock local who had dammed Lake Bungee in the early 1950s and later developed Witches Wood Lake, built it and cut much of the trail work himself. A 1982 SKI magazine guide gives 1971 as the first season and says the name was Santa's chuckle. The area's own brochure told it as a story: on Christmas Eve, Santa looked down on the Woodstock Valley, saw the lodge going up, and laughed loud enough to name the hill.
The layout ran upside down. The lodge and the parking lot sat at the summit, so skiers started the day by skiing down and rode the lifts back up to their cars. A Mueller T-bar and a rope tow ran side by side up the main slope, a second rope tow served Sleigh Ride, and there was a short tow for beginners. The vertical drop was about 300 feet. Every run carried a holiday name: Elfin Area, Mistletoe, Santa's, Reindeer Run, Sleigh Ride and Christmas Bells on the slopes, and North Pole, Blitzen and Comet among the narrow trails. Former skiers remember a long rope tow driven by the rear wheels of an old cement truck, jacked up on blocks inside a shed, with the speed set by the truck's throttle.
The summit building was the Christmas Tree Lodge, with fieldstone fireplaces and seats for about 250. A Worcester ski columnist who toured it recalled a south window shaped like a tall Christmas tree and floors laid from salvaged bowling lanes. After a thin first winter the area added snowmaking, and by 1982 it covered about half the terrain. That year weekend tickets cost $8, two runs were lit for night skiing, and SKI noted that crowds rarely topped 300. The winter before, it had opened for less than four weeks.
Snowy winters grew scarce in the 1980s, and the area ran on a shorter and shorter schedule. A 2017 local report says Campert operated it until it closed in 1987, while a ski directory listed 1989 as the closing year. The summit lodge became a private home, and the Mueller T-bar was still standing on the private property years later.