Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Birch Park, also called Eight Flags of Birch Park, was a ski area at Houlton, about three miles east of Stillwater, Minnesota, on east-facing slopes. The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project dates it from 1966 and gives 230 feet of vertical.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayA reader's 2018 comment on a 1983 aerial photo says the old ski area became a housing development off County Road E and Birch Park Road. (2018)4
Timeline
3 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Birch Park, 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 Birch Park
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1954–1982 · 2.9 mi away · WisconsinA ski area south of Somerset, opened by the McAlister family as Ski-Mac in 1954 and renamed Snowcrest in 1969, that closed around 1982.
- 1954–1967 · 11.8 mi away · WisconsinA family-run ski area on the St. Croix River bluffs near Osceola that ran from 1954 through the 1966–67 season.
- Years not yet collected · 15.1 mi away · MinnesotaA small Ramsey County ski hill in Battle Creek Park in St. Paul, with rope tows, night lighting and snowmaking in the late 1970s.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 4 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Birch Park, also called Eight Flags of Birch Park, was a ski area at Houlton, about three miles east of Stillwater, Minnesota, on east-facing slopes. The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project dates it from 1966 and gives 230 feet of vertical. By 1978 it ran seven rope tows, a T-bar and three chairlifts. MWLSAP's page of unusual Midwest lifts names it as one of the areas with a down-and-up chairlift, a single lift that climbed both sides of a valley.1,2
Skimap.org holds a 1966 trail map drawn before the east side opened, along with maps from 1979 and 1984. MWLSAP puts the closing at about 1985, with a question mark.1,3
TodayA reader's 2018 comment on a 1983 aerial photo says the old ski area became a housing development off County Road E and Birch Park Road. (2018)4
Sources for this history (4)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Birch Park (also called Eight Flags of Birch Park)
- 2Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Unique Ski Lifts of the Midwest
- 3Skimap.org · Birch Park
- 4Vintage Aerial · Aerial photo 17-SSC-4, St. Croix County, 1983, with reader comments
Photos
No photographs of Birch Park 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 Birch Park, in their own words.
Facts
Location
45.0558° N · 92.7504° W · Wisconsin
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
from 1966 · the year it closed is not yet collected
Closed for good; the year it closed is not yet collected. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 2all 2, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain