Temple Mountain Ski Area

Temple Mountain Ski Area in Temple, New Hampshire, just south of Pack Monadnock Mountain on Route 101, ran from the winter of 1937-38 to the winter of 2000-01. Charles Beebe, a Massachusetts native who had settled in Hollis, bought about 200 acres around 1936 after studying the snow that held in Peterboro Gap. He started Temple Mountain Ski Tow, Inc. and opened on December 26, 1937, with an 800-foot rope tow powered by a V-8 car engine. His land did not reach the highway at first, so early skiers had to trek in to reach the tow.

For its first two decades Temple ran on rope tows, mostly on weekends and holidays. In 1947 it gained rights to extend toward Route 101 and added a tow and a novice slope near the road. The 1958-59 season brought a 1,700-foot STABIL platter lift, a rare low design that was plagued by mechanical trouble and was replaced by a T-bar in 1967. A new base lodge went up in 1961, deliberately set well back from the parking lot, which Beebe said he liked that way. A second T-bar opened the west side in 1965-66, and Beebe's son Mike took over the operation around 1966.

The family did not put money into snowmaking, and a Ski magazine item of the era quoted them saying they had the equipment and never used it. Poor winters hit hard. In 1979-80 the area ran only about a dozen days, and in 1980-81 about 32. In April 1984 Peter Martin, Jim Cooper and Ronald DaSilva's Temple Mountain Ski Corporation bought the area and spent $1.2 million, including New Hampshire's first quad chairlift, three-phase power, snowmaking and lights. Sandy Eneguess became the owner in 1988, and a used double chairlift from Mt. Watatic in Massachusetts and Diamond Hill in Rhode Island was installed in 1992. The area advertised a 600-foot vertical drop.

Debt and seven years of unpaid property taxes led to bankruptcy in March 1997, and the mountain sat idle that winter before reopening in 1998-99. Charles Beebe died in February 2000 at age 91. On September 17, 2001, the owners announced Temple would not open for the coming season and put the 352 acres up for sale. The chairlifts were removed in 2004, and in December 2007 the State of New Hampshire bought the land for $1 million. It is now Temple Mountain State Reservation, where hikers use the old slopes.