Apple Hill

Frederick F. Kramer III, of Kramer's Music Store in Allentown, opened Apple Hill at Kernsville in 1962; the Commons summary puts its cost at $450,000, and two former skiers remember 1963 as the first season. It had snowmaking, night skiing and an A-frame lodge, with a rental shop and ski school below and a cafeteria above, on about 250 feet of vertical. The son of a ski school co-director counts two main rope tows and one T-bar, plus a short-lived upper tow in the late 1960s and a later tow beside the T-bar; the Commons summary lists a rope tow and two T-bars.^1,2

Apple Hill closed in 1978, after the 1977–78 season. In December 1978 plans were announced for a 51-acre recreation complex on the site, with a wave pool and water slides, but the financing fell through. In 2008, thirty years after the closing, about 85 former staff and skiers gathered for a reunion.^1,2

A visitor in 2006 found the T-bar still in place and the lodge run-down and vandalized.²

TodayThe T-bar and its drive house still stand among overgrown slopes, and the lodge's big window has lost its glass. (2020)²