Lost ski areaMassachusettsBerkshire HillsNortheast
Chickley Alp
Ran 1937–1979. A snow-train-era ski area on Route 8A in Hawley that opened in December 1937 and ran rope tows and a T-bar until the late 1970s.
Overview
Look around
Loading the ground…
Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
Counting who skied it…
Chickley Alp stood along Route 8A in Hawley, near the Chickley River. John Basciano, from Italy, and his wife Josephine, from Switzerland, bought a 210-acre farm there in May 1937 and opened the ski area on December 19 that year with a rope tow.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayYoung trees are filling in the old trails, and the base lodge is a private home.2
Timeline
8 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Chickley Alp, 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 Chickley Alp
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1949–1989 · 9.9 mi away · MassachusettsA family-run ski area on Route 9 in West Cummington that operated from the 1949–50 winter until March 1989.
- Opened 1956 · 12.5 mi away · MassachusettsA T-bar ski area on Route 2 in Shelburne, west of Greenfield, that ran from December 1956 into the early 1980s, first as the Mohawk Skiway.
- 1944–1985 · 14.3 mi away · VermontA surface-lift ski area at Heartwellville in Readsboro, called Dutch Hill for most of its life and Dutch Mountain for a few years, open from 1944 to 1985.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Chickley Alp stood along Route 8A in Hawley, near the Chickley River. John Basciano, from Italy, and his wife Josephine, from Switzerland, bought a 210-acre farm there in May 1937 and opened the ski area on December 19 that year with a rope tow. From late January 1938 snow trains brought skiers to Charlemont, about 450 on the first, and local teams carried them on to the slopes. By the early 1950s more rope tows had been added and the vertical had reached 300 feet.1,2
Joseph A. Graham bought the area in 1946, Everett Peabody in 1959 and Richard Desmarais in 1964. A T-bar went in for the 1967–68 winter. Without snowmaking the area could not ride out poor winters. New England Ski History gives 1978–79 as the last season and says the 1979–80 winter never opened; NELSAP dates the closing to 1980. A buyer in 1985 planned to reopen it with snowmaking, but it never came back.1,2
TodayYoung trees are filling in the old trails, and the base lodge is a private home.2
Timeline
- 1937Opens December 19 with a rope tow on a former farm1
- 1938First snow train reaches Charlemont with about 450 passengers1
- 1946Joseph A. Graham buys the area from the Bascianos1
- 1959Everett Peabody buys the area1
- 1964Richard Desmarais buys the area1,2
- 1967A T-bar opens for the 1967–68 season1
- 1979Last season, 1978–79; the following winter never opens1
- 1985Property sold; a plan to reopen with snowmaking fails1
Sources for this history (2)
- 1New England Ski History · Chickley Alp Ski Area History
- 2New England Lost Ski Areas Project · Chickley Alp Ski Center
Photos
No photographs of Chickley Alp 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 Chickley Alp, in their own words.
Facts
Location
42.6258° N · 72.9062° W · Massachusetts · Berkshire Hills
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1937–1979
Closed after the 1979 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 1all 1, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain