February 1, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Snow Valley: A lost ski area of the Green Mountains

by Jeff Leich/

Fritz Dillmann stands in front of Snow Man’s Rest, which he designed. (photo: Courtesy Kathe Dillmann)

Fritz Dillmann stands in front of Snow Man’s Rest, which he designed. (photo: Courtesy Kathe Dillmann)

Skiing had a lengthy pedigree in Vermont dating to a time well before the invention of ski tows. The 1924 national championships were held in Brattleboro, the first time the nationals had been located outside of the Midwest, then the center of skiing in the country.

The first American rope tow also was a Vermont product, built by South Newbury mechanic and engineer David Dodd in the winter of 1934. This tow was installed at Gilbert’s Hill outside Woodstock, and is 75 years old this season. It was at Woodstock that the rope tow concept was first known in this country, and it was there that tinkerers came to see an operating tow with an eye toward creating others.

After World War II, state government took an activist role in the development of ski areas. The Vermont Development Commission was able to use state highway funds to subsidize construction of ski area access roads, and construction and plowing of parking lots. For example, in 1957 the legislature approved $750,000 to build access roads to Burke Mountain, Jay Peak, Killington, Mount Snow and Okemo. Where new ski areas were on state land, some base shelters and sewage systems were built by the state and leased to ski area operators.

The era of ski area construction drew to a close at the end of the 1960s, at about the time that an increasing environmental consciousness in Vermont and nationwide led to the passage of legislation such as Vermont’s Act 250 and the National Environmental Policy Act, both signed into law in 1970. The permitting processes required under these laws had an unquestionable effect on the pace of new ski area construction, slowing new projects considerably. Additionally, the leveling off of growth in skier numbers in the early 1970s reduced demand for large new developments.

With more ski areas than any other New England state, Vermont had more areas vulnerable to the multiple pressures and new demands of the ski industry in the 1970s and 1980s, so it is no surprise that many became “lost” areas. Snow Valley was one of them.

Snow Valley, near Manchester, opened in the winter of 1941 with a handsome, low-slung base lodge built with stone and clapboard that combined traditional form with a modern feel, and a 2,500-foot Constam Alpine lift, the premier T-Bar of the time.

Snow Valley’s base lodge was featured in The Architectural Forum, probably in 1941 as the building neared completion. At a time when small and primitive warming huts, some with gravel floors, were common at Eastern ski area bases, this building was a statement that owners Dolf and Walter Rath intended a serious ski resort. The Rath Brothers were 1939 immigrants from Germany who lived in Greenwich, Conn., and were in the business of building precision instruments such as altimeters, working for their cousin, Paul Kollman, who ran the Square D electrical supply company.

Fritz Dillmann, designer of the Snow Valley lodge, was a skillful artist, and he soon joined the 10th Mountain Division and served with that unit throughout the war, recording scenes from Camp Hale and Italy in his sketchbook. The base lodge at Snow Valley, called Snow Valley Rest in the first year and subsequently Snow Man’s Rest, was cited in press reports as costing $12,000, while the entire cost of the new resort was $100,000.

In the winter of 1943, Snow Valley had the distinction of several of the most influential ski instructors in the country on its staff. When Sun Valley in Idaho closed for the duration of the war, the Rath Brothers offered Otto Lang of the Sun Valley ski school a position at Snow Valley. Lang accepted, and brought Fred Iselin and Elli Stiller with him. Lang only spent one winter there, and in his biography recounts his unhappiness at Snow Valley and comments on the bitter feuding between the Raths and Fred Pabst of nearby Bromley. Fred Iselin stayed on at Snow Valley until 1946.

In the late 1940s Walter Rath designed a coin-operated automatic race course timing system, and he was granted a patent for the device in 1951. Skiers could drop a coin in the slot at the start, activate the clock with a wand, and at the course finish, receive a card stamped with their elapsed time. He made an effort to lease the instrument to ski areas all over the country — Squaw Valley, Sugar Bowl, Madonna, Mad River and Aspen among them — apparently to no avail.

Despite the addition of new lifts — a Poma in 1960 and a Borvig double chair in 1977 — after several cycles of closing and revival, the area survived until 1984 then closed for good, one of hundreds of lost New England ski areas that slowly decay, alive only in the memories of those who prized them as touchstones of their lives.

Jeff Leich is the executive director of the New England Ski Museum in Franconia, N.H.

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