Independence Mine

Skiing at Independence Mine began with the gold miners themselves, and a Dartmouth racer working there as a tractor driver skied from the mine down to Palmer in the late 1930s, according to the Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project.¹

In September 1960 volunteers from Palmer and Wasilla put in a rope tow, and the ski area opened that fall on ground leased by Julius and Kaye Moore. Skiers could sleep and eat in the mine's old bunkhouse, and the U.S. Army biathlon team trained in the surrounding mountains. The Wattum and Hanks families ran it next, then Mark Mucha. Rope tows and a T-bar served about 500 feet of vertical from a base near 3,580 feet, and a poma came in the final years. The Anchorage Daily News dates the area from the mid-1960s; the project's first-hand accounts put the first winter in 1960.^1,2

It closed in the late 1970s. The state plowed the road only as far as Hatcher Pass Lodge, new state lift safety rules were too costly to meet, and the pipeline boom brought other places to ski around Anchorage.^1,2

TodayThe mine buildings are now Independence Mine State Historical Park, with groomed cross-country ski trails winding among them. (2026)^1,3