Lost ski areaColoradoFront RangeRocky Mountains
Holiday Hills
Ran 1965–1971. A ski area southwest of Woodland Park that Harlan and Kay Nimrod built with their Holiday Hills subdivision and ran from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Harlan and Kay Nimrod built Holiday Hills as part of their Holiday Hills subdivision, near Divide just outside Woodland Park. Work began in the fall of 1962, and in January 1965 the Ute Pass Courier announced the area open, with a J-bar nearly 2,000 feet long, bulldozed trails and an A-frame lodge with a moss-rock fireplace.1,2,3
Read the whole historyTodayThe lodge is a private home, and concrete lift footings and old grooming equipment remained on the hillside in 2006. (2006)1,2
Timeline
5 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Holiday Hills, 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 Holiday Hills
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1936–1984 · 3.3 mi away · ColoradoThe Pikes Peak Ski Club's area on the Pikes Peak Highway, first at Glen Cove from 1936 and later at Elk Park, which closed after the 1984 season.
- Opened 1924 · 4.2 mi away · ColoradoA jumping and rope-tow area at Glen Cove on the Pikes Peak Highway, where in 1936 the Pikes Peak Ski Club rigged what is credited as Colorado's first rope tow.
- Years not yet collected · 6.7 mi away · ColoradoA one-run, one-tow ski hill off Highway 67 between Divide and Cripple Creek that operated in the 1960s.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 3 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Harlan and Kay Nimrod built Holiday Hills as part of their Holiday Hills subdivision, near Divide just outside Woodland Park. Work began in the fall of 1962, and in January 1965 the Ute Pass Courier announced the area open, with a J-bar nearly 2,000 feet long, bulldozed trails and an A-frame lodge with a moss-rock fireplace. The run dropped nearly 400 feet. Colorado Ski History counts three tows and a Poma platter and nine runs, among them Chicken Alley and Nim-a-go-go; the area had rentals, a ski school and ski patrol, averaged 350 skiers a day, and taught Air Force Academy cadets under a contract.1,2,3
Its dates vary: 1965 to 1971 for Colorado Ski History, while Kay Nimrod recalled 1963 to 1973 to the Gazette and 1963 to 1972 to Rob Carrigan. Rising insurance costs, uneven snow and falling attendance ended it, the Gazette says. Equipment from Holiday Hills went into Cutty's Alpine Lakes north of Divide, which never opened, and local residents told Colorado Ski History the lifts were removed in the early 1990s.1,2,3
TodayThe lodge is a private home, and concrete lift footings and old grooming equipment remained on the hillside in 2006. (2006)1,2
Sources for this history (3)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Holiday Hills Ski Area
- 2Deseret News · Colorado hills are alive with ghost ski areas (Bill Vogrin, The Gazette; Deseret News, August 6, 2006)
- 3Restless native (Rob Carrigan) · Fading memories of Holiday Hills Ski Area near Woodland Park (Rob Carrigan, January 2014)
Photos
No photographs of Holiday Hills 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 Holiday Hills, in their own words.
Facts
Location
38.9329° N · 105.0837° W · Colorado · Front Range
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1965–1971
Closed after the 1971 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