Mt. Rockwood

Frank and Shirley Moschet moved to Silver Bay in 1955, and Frank helped build the town's first small rope-tow hill near the old water tower. When local children wanted harder terrain, he set out to build a larger area close to town. A friend who scouted sites with him dropped out after a back injury, and Frank paid for the project with a Small Business Administration loan. Three runs and a parking lot were cleared, Frank designed a one-story chalet, and electric rope tows with polypropylene rope replaced the old hill's gas engines and manila rope. Mount Rockwood opened in the winter of 1965, with lights for night skiing and a Polaris Sno-Traveler for grooming. MWLSAP gives its vertical as 430 feet.^1,2

Shirley ran the chalet kitchen, which also served lunches, dinners and ice cream in summer, and the area rented wooden skis. The owners hoped to draw skiers from Duluth and Two Harbors, but Lutsen and the publicly backed Spirit Mountain near Duluth, with chairlifts and modern grooming, won them instead. Mount Rockwood closed after the 1971–72 season, and that November the Minneapolis Star listed it among the areas that had quit.^1,3