Bear Valley

This little hill on Old Martin Road near De Pere, just south of Green Bay, began as the Pink Panther. Eric Elfner's history site, written with help from the founding family, says brothers Roy and Don Cain opened it for the 1964–65 season on land their family had skied for a few years; the Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project gives 1968. It had day and night skiing, and the Green Bay Press-Gazette ran group ski lessons there each winter.^1,2

By the late 1970s there were three runs: the Bunny Hill and the Headwall on rope tows, and a T-bar hill added in the mid-1970s. An A-frame was the first lodge, later joined by a mostly underground building called the Rathskeller. Roy Cain took over for 1979–80 and renamed the hill Snowburst to draw older skiers; MWLSAP dates the new name to 1978 or 1979 and lists three rope tows and a T-bar in 1978.^1,2

Elfner says Snowburst ran until the mid-1980s; MWLSAP gives 1983. MWLSAP adds that it apparently came back as Bear Valley in 1985, appears on a 1988 map and is last mentioned in 1989–90.^1,2

TodayIn 2006 the old lodge and bar buildings still stood, with a rope-tow pole on the Bunny Hill and the T-bar's machine shed atop the Headwall. (2006)³