Lost ski areaColoradoFlat TopsRocky Mountains
Cowboy Peak
Closed after the 1985 season. A free rope-tow hill on a ranch just north of Oak Creek, run for the town from the mid-1960s until March 1985.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Cowboy Peak, also called Cowboy Hill, was a pasture slope on Charles and Betty Sweetland's ranch just north of Oak Creek. In the mid-1960s the rope tow from Capitol Hill was moved there.1
Read the whole historyTimeline
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Memories
Skied Cowboy Peak, 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 Cowboy Peak
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Years not yet collected · 0.7 mi away · ColoradoA free town ski hill in Oak Creek with a self-service rope tow, used from about 1960 to 1966.
- 1950–1953 · 19.6 mi away · ColoradoA family-built rope-tow ski area on Baker Mountain at Muddy Pass, on the east side of Rabbit Ears Pass, that ran from 1950 to 1953.
- 2020–2023 · 23.5 mi away · ColoradoA ski area with no lifts on Bear Mountain between Kremmling and Steamboat Springs, where skiers climbed under their own power, open for three winters from 2020 to 2023.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 1 page below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Cowboy Peak, also called Cowboy Hill, was a pasture slope on Charles and Betty Sweetland's ranch just north of Oak Creek. In the mid-1960s the rope tow from Capitol Hill was moved there. The Lyons Club of Oak Creek sponsored it, leasing the slope for a dollar a year and charging no admission, and it now had floodlights for night skiing. When the club folded, the town took over the lease. For years Oak Creek's March winter festival held events on the hill.1
Trouble began in the early 1980s over a barbed-wire fence near the bottom, which had to come down for skiing and go back up each spring, and over late lease payments. In the winter of 1985 the town's animal control officer picked up the Sweetlands' basset hound. They paid the $20 fine but refused a $5 court fee, and in March 1985 they closed the hill after nearly 20 years of free skiing.1
Sources for this history (1)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Cowboy Peak Ski Area (Bill Fetcher)
Photos
No photographs of Cowboy Peak 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 Cowboy Peak, in their own words.
Facts
Location
40.2813° N · 106.9511° W · Colorado · Flat Tops
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
until 1985 · the year it opened is not yet collected
Closed after the 1985 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
No figures from its operating years are collected yet.
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain