Oyster Bay Ski Center
Oyster Bay, New Yorkc. 1948-1959
Order Oyster Bay Ski Center tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. Oyster Bay ran rope tows on a pasture hillside on Long Island's North Shore, and it opened only when nature left a few inches of snow. A street in Mill Neck is still called Ski Lane, and the historical society keeps the original wooden sign. Browse the styles below, and the full Oyster Bay 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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Oyster Bay Ski Center History
Oyster Bay Ski Center in Oyster Bay, New York, ran on a pasture hillside off Lake Avenue on Long Island's North Shore, on the Mill Neck side of the hamlet, about 28 miles from New York City. A 1948 report names attorney Oscar Summers as president of an Oyster Bay Ski Club running a 500-foot rope tow at Lake Avenue and Glen Cove Road, and New York State ski guides list the Ski Center from the 1949-50 season through 1959. One local history puts the start around 1947 and calls it the first ski area on Long Island.
The 1949-50 guide listed two tows, an East Tow of 500 feet and a North Tow of 600 feet, serving an East Slope and a North Slope, each about 1,000 feet wide and up to 800 feet long. A heated, lighted shelter sold refreshments and handled first aid. Day skiing ran on weekends and holidays at $1.50, and night skiing ran on weeknights at $1.00. A third tow came in 1951, driven by the rear wheel of a pickup truck. There was no snowmaking. The hill opened only when nature left a few inches on the ground, which on Long Island was never a sure thing.
By the mid-1950s Summers was listed as manager, with three tows, three slopes and a trail, open weekends and evenings when snow allowed. People who skied there remembered a small booth at the foot of the hill with a pebbled floor and a potbelly stove. The last guide listing is 1959. Why it closed is not documented; thin winters and postwar building on the North Shore are the usual explanations, and the hill is now grown in and built over. A residential street there in the village of Mill Neck is still called Ski Lane.
The Oyster Bay Historical Society found the area's original OYSTER BAY SKI CENTER sign while sorting objects at the Earle-Wightman House and showed it in its 2013-14 winter exhibit, Snow Day in Oyster Bay. Soon after, Ken Summers, Oscar's son, gave the society six more of the hill's wooden signs, stenciled red boards reading SKI AT YOUR OWN RISK, BE CAREFUL MOVE OVER and an arrow marked TO-NIGHT.