Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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River Bend was a ski hill at the Riverbend campground near Watertown. The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project lists it with question marks: it places skiing there in the late 1980s, citing a 1987 newspaper advertisement, and notes that the skiing may have been cross-country only.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayThe grounds are now River Bend RV Resort, a riverside campground with a water park.1,4
Timeline
2 events · swipe
Memories
Skied River Bend, 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 River Bend
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1972–2013 · 20.5 mi away · WisconsinA ski hill at Oconomowoc, near Milwaukee, known as Olympia, Scotsland and the Highlands of Olympia, that ran from the early 1970s until 2013.
- Years not yet collected · 35.2 mi away · WisconsinA small ski hill with a J-bar on the Lakeland Hills golf course in Lodi, which MWLSAP dates, with question marks, to about 1972–1974.
- 1970–1982 · 40.5 mi away · WisconsinA ski area near Burlington with 192 feet of vertical, open from 1970 until a December 1982 ad said the hill would not open that season.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 4 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
River Bend was a ski hill at the Riverbend campground near Watertown. The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project lists it with question marks: it places skiing there in the late 1980s, citing a 1987 newspaper advertisement, and notes that the skiing may have been cross-country only. That November 1987 advertisement, which offered campground memberships, named skiing among the year-round campground's attractions, along with a pool, water slides and tennis.1,2
A River Bend Resort trail guide, which Skimap.org dates to 1990, shows a downhill layout: a chairlift, two beginner trails named Turtle and Cracker Jack, and three runs called Easy Street, The Rapids and Bend's End. No source found gives the year skiing began or ended.3
TodayThe grounds are now River Bend RV Resort, a riverside campground with a water park.1,4
Sources for this history (4)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Riverbend — Wisconsin
- 2The Journal Times (via Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project) · Campground membership, Riverbend Campground (advertisement)
- 3Skimap.org · River Bend
- 4Travel Wisconsin (Wisconsin Department of Tourism) · River Bend RV Resort
Photos
No photographs of River Bend 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 River Bend, in their own words.
Facts
Location
43.1695° N · 88.8706° W · Wisconsin
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.
No figures from its operating years are collected yet.
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain