Mt. Joy

Mt. Joy was a small ski hill in Wakefield, about 10 miles east of Ironwood in the western Upper Peninsula. A November 1958 roundup of Michigan's coming ski season named it the newest of the peninsula's 15 ski centers, and Michigan's Forgotten Ski Areas says it opened for the 1958–59 winter. A 1966 AAA guide listed a 1,000-foot slope with tows and several beginner slopes. A skier who learned there in the late 1950s recalled two rope tows, lights for night skiing and a lodge with a fireplace, and another reader remembered a ski jump.^1,2,3,4,5

A reader on MILSAP says the rope tow ran from 1958 to 1964 and the hill reopened for a few winters around 1969 to 1971. In January 1971 its operator, Winter Sports, Inc., was struggling to keep a lift operator. That June the company told Wakefield in a newspaper notice that both of its two seasons had lost money, and it asked residents whether the hill should stay open. MWLSAP gives 1971 as the year it closed.^1,4,6,7