Alpine Lake

Alpine Lake began as Arlie Hull's hunting and fishing camp northeast of Terra Alta. Preston County businessmen turned it into a development called Mountaintop Vacationland in the 1960s, and Morgantown industrialist J. W. Ruby then bought it, renamed it Alpine Lake and planned a residential resort. e-WV dates Ruby's purchase to 1969 and the resort's own history to 1971; the resort's 50th-anniversary page says the Alpine Lake Resort name became official on April 7, 1971.^2,3,4

Skiing was part of the resort by 1973, when its newsletter announced a recreation director who ran the ski school in winter; the Snow Sports Museum of West Virginia's timeline starts the area in 1974. DCSki records a 450-foot vertical with a rope tow and two T-bars. Readers recall the lifts changing over the years, a main slope with an easier and a harder way down, a wooded trail that opened only after heavy snow, and a small learning hill.^1,3,5

Readers remember skiing there as late as the winter of 1995–96; a visitor in the late 1990s found no active slopes.¹

TodayAlpine Lake Resort now offers cross-country and backcountry ski trails, and the old slope is used for sledding.¹