Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Pere Marquette was a ski area on Highway 100 near Grafton, north of St. Louis, about five miles east of the Pere Marquette State Park lodge; its entrance lay just past the Pere Marquette Cross monument.1,2,3
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3 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Pere Marquette, 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 Pere Marquette
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1983–1984 · 95.1 mi away · MissouriA ski area on Shepherd Mountain above Ironton in southeast Missouri that ran on man-made snow for a single season, 1983–84.
- Opened 1964 · 134.2 mi away · MissouriA small resort ski area at Tan-Tar-A on the Lake of the Ozarks, opened in 1964 with snowmaking and last advertised around 1981.
- 1982–1991 · 140.4 mi away · MissouriA small ski area just southwest of Kirksville in northeast Missouri, opened in 1982 with snowmaking and handle tows, and closed in 1991 or perhaps 1989.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 4 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Pere Marquette was a ski area on Highway 100 near Grafton, north of St. Louis, about five miles east of the Pere Marquette State Park lodge; its entrance lay just past the Pere Marquette Cross monument. A rope tow was running by January 1972, before any snowmaking was in place, and SKI magazine listed the area among Illinois snow-report contacts that month. By January 1974 it had a chairlift, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pictured its manager, John Moore, riding it. The vertical was about 380 feet. It closed in 1974.1,2,3
Colorado Ski History's 1998 list described it only as a planned area with a chairlift, four rope tows, full snowmaking and 420 feet of vertical, and repeated a 1971 SKI magazine report that it had been stopped over a bald eagle nesting site.4
Sources for this history (4)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Pere Marquette
- 2SKI Magazine · Handy Facts: Snow Phones (SKI Magazine, January 1972), copy on the Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project
- 3St. Louis Post-Dispatch · Photo: on the chair lift at the Pere Marquette Ski Area (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 23, 1974), copy on the Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project
- 4Colorado Ski History · Lost Areas #26 (The Lost Ski Areas of Illinois), The Colorado Skier, July 30, 1998
Photos
No photographs of Pere Marquette 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 Pere Marquette, in their own words.
Facts
Location
38.9798° N · 90.4677° W · Illinois
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1971–1974
Closed after the 1974 season. 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