Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Irish Hills Sports Park opened in 1962 near Onsted, just south of US 12 between Sand Lake and Wampler Lake. Sports Illustrated reported that winter that the new area had three Doppelmayr T-bars rising 60, 105 and 165 feet, 12 slopes, snowmaking, a lodge with a cafeteria, restaurant and rental shop, and a natural lake for skating.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayThe former base lodge serves the nine-hole Irish Hills Golf Course, which has run a winter tubing hill with its own snow guns. (2020)1,2
Timeline
5 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Irish Hills Sports Park, 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 Irish Hills Sports Park
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1980 · 49.1 mi away · MichiganA ski hill the City of Riverview built and ran on its landfill near Detroit, open from December 1980 until the 1990s.
- Opened 1947 · 50.5 mi away · MichiganA ski hill above Teeple Lake in Highland State Recreation Area, opened by the Pontiac Ski Club in the 1947–48 winter and still listed in the 1980s.
- 1949–1995 · 52.7 mi away · MichiganA small ski hill on Foley Road in Fenton that opened as Summit in the late 1940s and ran as the Kandahar Ski Club from 1965 until 1995.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Irish Hills Sports Park opened in 1962 near Onsted, just south of US 12 between Sand Lake and Wampler Lake. Sports Illustrated reported that winter that the new area had three Doppelmayr T-bars rising 60, 105 and 165 feet, 12 slopes, snowmaking, a lodge with a cafeteria, restaurant and rental shop, and a natural lake for skating. A 2,000-foot double chairlift was added in 1968, and a 1977 guide counted one chair, two bar lifts, four rope tows and 16 runs. MWLSAP gives the vertical as over 200 feet.1,2
The area was renamed Shamrock Valley in 1979, and the last mention MWLSAP has found is from 1981. Readers say part of the land was later built over with houses, and the highest knob was bulldozed down.1,2
TodayThe former base lodge serves the nine-hole Irish Hills Golf Course, which has run a winter tubing hill with its own snow guns. (2020)1,2
Sources for this history (2)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Michigan lost ski areas: Irish Hills Sports Park (Shamrock Valley)
- 2Michigan Lost Ski Areas Project · Irish Hills Winter Sports Park – Onsted
Photos
No photographs of Irish Hills Sports Park 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 Irish Hills Sports Park, in their own words.
Facts
Location
42.0550° N · 84.1560° W · Michigan
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
from 1962 · the year it closed is not yet collected
Closed for good; the year it closed is not yet collected. 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