Ski Maple Valley

Terry Tyler, who had already opened two smaller ski areas in Dummerston, designed Maple Valley on Route 30, six miles northwest of Brattleboro. In 1963 he and the Pirovane family built it on the 200-acre Taft property. It was dedicated on December 21, 1963, and opened with a 3,038-foot Hall double chairlift, a 775-foot Hall T-bar and five trails. A second double chair followed, and snowmaking reached the T-bar slope before 1966–67.^1,2

Owners changed often: new investors took a controlling stake in 1977, the stock was sold around 1985, the 370-acre area went at a satellite auction for $1.2 million in 1989, and a foreclosure auction sold it again in 1997. Skiing stopped after 1995–96, resumed in early 1999, and ran on weekends and holidays, with snow tubing, through 1999–2000, its last season. That year it listed four lifts and 19 trails, and NESH gives it 1,000 feet of vertical.^1,2

NELSAP later found every lift still standing and the area still for sale. Sugar Mountain Holdings bought it in 2018 to turn the base lodge into a brewery, distillery and event space. The state Act 250 permit took from 2020 until final approval in December 2023, and by August 2026 the brewery, named North Chair after one of the old lifts, expected to pour its first beer that fall.^1,2,3

TodayThe old base lodge is being made into a brewery, North Chair, expected to open in the fall of 2026. (2026)³