Ski Valley

Fred Egan and his family opened Ski Valley on the east side of Diamond Hill in Cumberland for the 1961–62 season, starting with rope tows. Skiing magazine reported that Egan powered one tow with a 1953 Chevrolet truck from his steeplejack business. A T-bar 1,400 feet long was likely in place by the 1965–66 winter, and in 1967–68 the area advertised four slopes and four trails, with snowmaking and night skiing. NELSAP, whose guidebook entries give 315 feet of vertical, dates the opening to the mid-1960s and keeps it apart from the neighboring Diamond Hill ski area.^1,2

A Hall double chairlift came for 1971–72, but its debt led to foreclosure and the chair was removed, probably before 1977–78. Around 1981 Egan bought the lifts and snowmaking of the closed Pine Top area, and his son Dennis, by then the manager, put up one of its T-bars for 1982–83. After Fred Egan's death in 1982, Mary Egan ran the 1984–85 season having already decided to sell, and the area likely shut for good in late February 1985. NELSAP gives 1986 as the closing year, probably earlier.^1,2

Most of the land went to Marguerite Building Corp., a real estate developer, and within a few years the lifts were gone and the lodge demolished. The condominium project stalled in the early 1990s.¹

TodayThe old ski area is a condominium complex that was never fully finished.²