Silver Basin Ski Area
Pioneer, California1971-1974
Order Silver Basin Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The layout ran backwards on Highway 88, with the lodge, ticket office and cafeteria up by the road, so skiers headed downhill first and rode the chairlifts back. Crowds stayed thin, and in a 1972 newspaper ad owner John Allen asked the public for help. Browse the styles below, and the full Silver Basin history is further down. We are an American small business bringing back the signs and logos of places and teams that are long gone but remembered fondly.
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Silver Basin Ski Area History
Silver Basin Ski Area sat on Highway 88 in the Sierra Nevada of California, in Eldorado National Forest on the Pioneer side of Carson Pass, about 44 miles from Jackson by its own advertising. John Allen opened it in 1971, and a newspaper ad that fall called it new, promised an opening on Thanksgiving weekend, and listed two double chairlifts, two small surface lifts, beginner to advanced runs, a day lodge with a restaurant, a ski shop and a ski school. A 36-unit lodging building was scheduled to open for Christmas 1971.
The layout was backwards. The lodge, ticket office, cafeteria and ski school sat up near the highway, and skiers headed down from there, with trips back to the lodge by chairlift. The 1972 trail map shows runs with mining-camp names, a longer chairlift on the plan with a 740-foot rise, and areas marked as future ski development and a future snowplay area. The map's title box billed the place as Ski - Snowplay, on Highway 88, 44 miles from Jackson.
Crowds did not come. Allen put the blame on the remote road, which was hard to find, and on the restaurant and the gentle terrain, and in a 1972 newspaper ad he asked the public for help. A history in the Sierra Sun says the lifts shut down in 1974, and that Allen later sued the bank that turned down a loan, which ended in foreclosure. The sources disagree on the dates around the first closing: one trail-map source says the area opened in 1970, and a magazine piece says it ran into the early 1980s.
The hill reopened several times under other names over the next two decades, with new owners and several bankruptcies, and it has been shut since 1995. The old towers, buildings and lifts still stand on the forest land, and about 65 acres of the property was listed for sale in 2025 with permits for condos and townhomes.