Tapawingo Ski Area

Tapawingo Ski Area in Woodbury, Connecticut, sat on Route 47 about four miles north of the town center, on a northeast-facing hillside beside Sprain Brook. Kermit Adams, back from the Marine Corps and working in sand and gravel, and Thomas Brownell spent about two years looking for a site before forming a company in August 1963. Tapawingo opened that December with a T-bar, a rope tow, snowmaking and lights for night skiing. Adams called it a small family area, and nearby prep schools were among its steady customers.

By the late 1960s the area ran a 1,200-foot T-bar and two rope tows on about 210 feet of vertical, with seven trails and slopes, a ski school of twelve instructors, a snack bar and a rental shop. An adult weekend ticket cost $4.50. In July 1970 the hill hosted a rock concert that drew about 3,000 people. Money ran short in the early 1970s, and in 1972 Rod Taylor, the 1970 U.S. national downhill champion, bought the area with partners John Stout and Perley Grimes. They renamed it the Woodbury Ski and Racquet Club, and early ads billed it as Ski Mt. Woodbury, formerly Tapawingo, with round-the-clock snowmaking and the Rod Taylor Ski School.

Taylor ran the place hands on, making snow and grooming himself, and locals came to call it Rod's. Indoor tennis courts under a bubble, summer concerts and cross-country trails were added in the 1970s, and a double chairlift and three new trails arrived for 1976-77. The lodge burned in May 1980 and was rebuilt. Woodbury let snowboarders in early and built one of the first halfpipes in New England in the late 1980s, opened a large skate park in 1998, and was often the first ski area in New England to open each season. Later listings gave 300 feet of vertical, 15 trails, a double chair and five surface lifts, plus a tubing park.

Taylor died in July 2014, and the area ran two more winters. The last day of skiing was March 12, 2016. A dry winter and an uncertain future kept it closed the next season, and in 2017 the property went up for sale. Proposals for an entertainment venue and a concert and camping site came to nothing. In 2021 a creditor holding a court judgment against the business assigned it to a company led by the owner of Quassy Amusement Park, which foreclosed and announced a tubing reopening for 2022-23, but the tubing park never reopened. The tubing parcel was sold in 2023, and the 20.6-acre ski property was sold in August 2024 to private buyers with no announced plans for skiing. The double chairlift was still standing in recent photos.