Lost ski areaNew JerseyMid-Atlantic
Belle Mountain
Ran 1965–1997. A small Mercer County ski hill near Lambertville and the Delaware River, skied from the mid-1960s until early 1997.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Belle Mountain was a community ski hill in Mercer County, near Lambertville and close to the Pennsylvania line. Two rope tows ran from 1965 to 1968, and a Hall double chair, 786 feet long, went in for 1969.1
Read the whole historyTodaySledders still use the hill. (2001)1
Timeline
4 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Belle Mountain, or worked there?
Tell us what you remember, or what this page has wrong. Memories show here, credited to you, after we read them; facts are checked against a source before they change a figure.
Lost near Belle Mountain
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Years not yet collected · 28.4 mi away · New JerseyA one-rope-tow beginners' hill near Peapack and Gladstone, open by the late 1950s and still running in 1987.
- Opened 1965 · 34.2 mi away · New JerseyA small rope-tow hill in Mansfield Township that ran from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s.
- Years not yet collected · 38.6 mi away · New JerseyA ski area in Pine Hill, New Jersey, open by 1978, whose site became a golf course in 1998.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 1 page below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Belle Mountain was a community ski hill in Mercer County, near Lambertville and close to the Pennsylvania line. Two rope tows ran from 1965 to 1968, and a Hall double chair, 786 feet long, went in for 1969. At its height it had four lifts, the chair, two rope tows and a Pony lift, and about seven trails, though in practice there were three ways down. The drop was about 190 feet; later guidebooks gave 235.1
Mercer County ran it at a loss for years. A management company operated it for the last three seasons, the county still losing roughly $70,000 to $100,000 a year, and when that company ended its contract early the county stopped. Belle Mountain was last skied in the first months of 1997 and closed officially in 1998.1
TodaySledders still use the hill. (2001)1
Sources for this history (1)
- 1New England Lost Ski Areas Project · Belle Mountain
Photos
No photographs of Belle Mountain we may republish yet
Its old photos and trail maps live on the sites that collected them, and Google finds the rest.
Memories
What skiers remember of Belle Mountain, in their own words.
Facts
Location
40.3374° N · 74.9242° W · New Jersey
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1965–1997
Closed after the 1997 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 3all 3, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain