Underhill Ski Bowl

Underhill Ski Bowl in Underhill Center, Vermont, sat on the bowl-shaped hillsides of the old Egan farm off Stevensville Road, on the western side of Mt. Mansfield. Skiing there began in 1937. Sepp Ruschp, the Austrian instructor newly hired in Stowe, scouted the west side of the mountain and picked the farm's slopes, and four local men, Lawrence Egan, Lawrence Casey, Giles Willey and Jesse Holmes, put in an 800-foot rope tow with lights for night skiing. They formed the Underhill Winter Sports Club and called the hill the Snow Bowl. A tow ticket cost 75 cents, nights included, and a single ride was a dime.

World War II stopped the club's plans for the mountain. In 1946 the Durbrow family, John Durbrow with Bill and Emmy Durbrow, bought the farm with the rope tow still standing and reopened it as the Underhill Ski Bowl. An early brochure sold the 800-foot tow, floodlit slopes, a shelter house with a lunch counter, sleigh rides, 115 inches of average snowfall and a farmhouse lodge with rooms and bunks for 23 guests. Emmy Durbrow ran the shelter house, and for several years Carl and Louise McClellan operated the hill. The slope sat high enough that it could be snowing on the slope while it rains in the village below.

It was a learning and racing hill for the Burlington area. Skiers came for moonlight runs in the 1950s and for lighted night skiing on Wednesday and Friday evenings, which could draw a few hundred people in the 1960s. There were children's races on Saturdays, a downhill and cross-country ski school, school meets and New Year's Eve torchlight runs. A 12-year-old Billy Kidd ran one of his first races here in 1955. In the mid-1960s the Durbrows added a platter lift beside the rope tow, and a 1973 guide listed two trails and 145 feet of vertical.

Bigger resorts nearby drew skiers away, and poor snow years and rising insurance costs did the rest. The closing was announced in the spring of 1982, after the hill had cut back to weekends, school holidays and a couple of nights a week. The platter lift was donated to a community ski hill in northern Vermont but never put up there. The base lodge was torn down around 2000. Parts of the rope tow, light poles and concrete footings were still on the hill in 2007, the open slopes can be seen from Stevensville Road, and the land is private and posted.