Lost ski areaNorth CarolinaBlue Ridge MountainsSoutheast
Mill Ridge
A small chairlift ski area off Highway 105 between Boone and Linville, remembered from the late 1960s to about 1990, whose slopes are now community trails.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Mill Ridge was a small ski area off Highway 105 between Boone and Linville. Its dates are not settled: DCSki places it mainly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its readers remember it from the late 1960s to about 1990, and a 2020 neighborhood history calls it a ski resort of the 1960s and 1970s.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayThe former slopes are trails within the Mill Ridge community, where the old lift and its red chairs remain.1,2
Memories
Skied Mill Ridge, 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 Mill Ridge
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1964 · 2.6 mi away · North CarolinaTwo small ski slopes at the Hound Ears Club near Boone, opened by the Robbins brothers in 1964 alongside a golf course.
- Closed 1985 · 71.2 mi away · VirginiaVirginia's southernmost ski area, a small chairlift hill at Fancy Gap beside the Blue Ridge Parkway, run from the mid-1970s until 1985.
- Opened 1972 · 85 mi away · KentuckyA small ski area on Big Black Mountain near Lynch in eastern Kentucky that, by one account, opened in 1972 and closed around 1982.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Mill Ridge was a small ski area off Highway 105 between Boone and Linville. Its dates are not settled: DCSki places it mainly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its readers remember it from the late 1960s to about 1990, and a 2020 neighborhood history calls it a ski resort of the 1960s and 1970s. It had a chairlift and a rope tow, a rental shop, a sandwich shop and a handful of quiet runs for beginners and intermediates, along with one short, steep trail called Go for It. Owner Lou Pitts enlarged the lodge, snowmaking, restaurant and first-aid room during the 1980s, and the area had night skiing.1,2
The ski area closed after several poor, warm winters; the 2020 history adds that larger resorts nearby, such as Sugar Mountain, Appalachian Ski Mountain and Beech Mountain, drew the crowds. The old slopes became trails in the Mill Ridge community.1,2
TodayThe former slopes are trails within the Mill Ridge community, where the old lift and its red chairs remain.1,2
Timeline
Sources for this history (2)
- 1DCSki · Mill Ridge
- 2828 Real Estate · Mill Ridge: Historical High Country of NC Neighborhood (August 19, 2020)
Photos
No photographs of Mill Ridge 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 Mill Ridge, in their own words.
Facts
Location
36.1541° N · 81.7791° W · North Carolina · Blue Ridge Mountains
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
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 1all 1, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain