Lost ski areaColoradoFront RangeRocky Mountains
Rock Creek
Ran 1947–1952. A rope-tow ski area on Highway 7 near Allenspark, about 19 miles from Lyons, that opened in 1947 and ran into the early 1950s.
Overview
Look around
Loading the ground…
Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
Counting who skied it…
Rock Creek opened in 1947 beside Highway 7, the road from Lyons to Estes Park, and the Forest Service expected it to do well. Bill Hottel of Longmont, a 10th Mountain Division veteran, managed it.1
Read the whole historyTimeline
4 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Rock Creek, 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 Rock Creek
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Years not yet collected · 2.3 mi away · ColoradoSki jumping hills and a rope-tow slope outside Allenspark, laid out by Lars Haugen from about 1918 and skied into the 1950s.
- Years not yet collected · 13.2 mi away · ColoradoA one-rope-tow ski hill at the old mining camp of Cardinal, off Caribou Road three miles west of Nederland, that ran in the 1940s.
- Opened 1931 · 14.9 mi away · ColoradoA ski jumping and rope-tow hill on Shadow Mountain, across Grand Lake from the town, used from the early 1930s; accounts of when it ended differ.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Rock Creek opened in 1947 beside Highway 7, the road from Lyons to Estes Park, and the Forest Service expected it to do well. Bill Hottel of Longmont, a 10th Mountain Division veteran, managed it. Rope tows of 400 and 1,800 feet served five runs, two for beginners, two for intermediates and one for experts, and there was a snack bar and a ski patrol.1
Plans for the 1951–52 season called for a J-bar or T-bar to the summit of Iron Clad Ridge and a larger lodge with a dormitory, but none of it was built, and the area operated only until 1952. When The Colorado Skier looked for it in 1992, the site was heavily overgrown and no trace of the tows remained.1,2
Sources for this history (2)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Rock Creek Ski Area
- 2Visit Allenspark · The History of Allenspark
Photos
No photographs of Rock Creek 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 Rock Creek, in their own words.
Facts
Location
40.1599° N · 105.5373° W · Colorado · Front Range
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1947–1952
Closed after the 1952 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 2all 2, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain