Sharp Mountain

Sharp Mountain was a small ski area built in the mid-1960s on coal-rich land in Pottsville's Yorkville section, in the anthracite region. Ski Magazine says the county's president judge and coal-business partners built it; a local history says Sayre Operations of Ashland ran it. Its lodge, built in 1964 with glass walls facing the slope, held a dining room and a large fireplace. A double chair and a T-bar served the trails, and the city's Winter Carnival began because of the ski area.^1,2,3

Snow was the trouble. The snowmakers drew on the city's water, which ran around 50 degrees, so they needed hard cold. The area hung on into the early 1970s and closed, sat a year with no buyer, and was sold in September 1973 to a doctor from out of town, who ran it one more winter before closing it for good. Its equipment went to other ski areas; a reader says the double chair went to Little Gap, now Blue Mountain.^1,3

The Pottsville Club bought the lodge in 1975 after its downtown clubhouse burned and stayed until it closed in 2013. Mining roads and a strip pit have since cut across the old lift lines. In 2006 a press release announced ski races on the slope on February 4, for Pottsville's 200th birthday.^1,2,3

TodayThe old lodge stands closed and vacant; a restaurant there shut by early 2020. (2026)²