Ski Starlite Ski Area

Ski Starlite near Memphis, Indiana, was a chairlift ski area on State Road 60 in southeastern Clark County, about 13 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. Its mailing address was a post office box in Sellersburg. A company called Brown County Ski Mountain Resort Inc. spent two years building it on a 500-acre site, at a projected cost of $7 million. The principal investors were Russell Murphy, a Greencastle real estate executive, Dr. Donald E. Hedrick and J. Kirby Overman, a former basketball coach who served as resident manager. In October 1980 the Evansville Press reported the opening was six weeks away and described long-range plans for 20 trails, a 5,000-car parking lot and a summer theme park.

The centerpiece was a double-double chairlift: two lines of double chairs running side by side up the hill, with a mid-station where one pair let riders off halfway. Three or four platter lifts served the beginner slopes at the base. A seven-acre lake was dug to supply the snowmaking system. The resort advertised about 500 feet of vertical drop, the most in Indiana, and a winding trail about a mile long. Its two-story chalet had a fireplace lounge, a full bar and live music most nights, and SKI Magazine noted in 1982 that Starlite was the only ski area in the state with a liquor license.

Rain broke up the first season, 1980-81. By late January 1982 the area had logged 41 ski days and more than 25,000 skiers, but an Indianapolis News column said the trails split between very steep expert runs and long flats, and that the developers' finances had been badly handled by their own admission. In January 1983 the area advertised itself as the all new Ski Starlite, with eight slopes, six lifts, night skiing, new grooming equipment and an introductory two-for-one lift ticket. It was missing from a statewide list of ski areas that December, and it closed by 1984.

The area never reopened. The property on State Road 60 has since been offered for sale as a former ski facility, unused for skiing for decades.