Oregon Ridge Ski Area

Oregon Ridge Ski Area near Cockeysville, Maryland, was a short-lived hill in Baltimore County about ten minutes from the Baltimore Beltway, close to Interstate 83 and Shawan Road. A brochure from the opening years called it Maryland's only metropolitan ski area. It was built and run by Asher and Associates as a unit of American Conservation Trustees, Inc., with Royce Asher and Bob Lumpe and Mike Harroun as managers, on a tract of 560 acres.

The brochure listed a 1,900-foot double chairlift that carried 1,200 skiers an hour, four rope tows and two runs, with a vertical drop of almost 300 feet. Larchmont snowmaking covered 13 acres, and night skiing ran until 10:30 p.m. The season was set for December 15 to March 1. The lodge had a ski shop run by a Baltimore sporting goods store, two open fireplaces and a restaurant, and the Royce Asher Ski School was directed by Michael Harroun. A reader who taught there in 1966 recalls working for Sigi Gerstung's ski school, and the Baltimore Museum of Industry holds photos of the area dated February 5, 1965.

Natural snow was too unreliable, and the Baltimore climate made snowmaking hard. One DCSki reader says the area went under in 1967, when its double chairlift and snowmaking equipment were sold to another ski area. Skilifts.org, as quoted by another reader, dates the lift to 1963. Other readers remember the county running a rope tow on the old hill into the 1980s, with sources disagreeing on how long.

The land is now Oregon Ridge Park, a 1,043-acre Baltimore County park with a nature center and a lodge. The old main slope is used for sledding and as seating for outdoor concerts, and readers report that concrete lift footings can still be found on the hill.