Engelwood

Engelwood lay on the bluffs and ravines of Guy and Beulah Engelhardt's farm beside the St. Croix River near Osceola. In 1954 Everett and Lucille Trulson of Minneapolis, looking for land for a ski area of their own, leased that end of the farm and cleared runs from its wooded slopes; the name joins the Engelhardt name to Plenty Wood, the farm's name. At first there were rope tows but no lights, grooming or indoor plumbing, and the Headwall was so steep the bulldozer had to be lowered down it on a cable.^1,2

Arnold Kustritz, a St. Paul electrician, later bought the business, and the lease was extended through 1971. Snowmaking arrived, with homemade guns fed from the river, and Kustritz's crew built a T-bar and a J-bar near the chalet, though a mid-1960s brochure shows most runs still on rope tows. Engelwood closed after the 1966–67 season. Kustritz cleared slopes for a new area, Mt. Somerset, on land just to the south, but the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, created on October 2, 1968, kept ski areas out of its corridor and the work stopped.¹

The ski area went to investors with no wish to run it, and in October 1995 the Standing Cedars Community Land Conservancy bought the Engelwood property.¹

TodayThe old runs lie in Standing Cedars' Engelwood land, open to hikers, where rope-tow remains still show as the forest takes the slopes back. (2025)^3,4