Lost ski areaNorth DakotaMidwest
Skyline Skiway
A ski hill and old Nordic jump in Benson County, three miles east of Fort Totten and ten south of Devils Lake, run as a ski area from 1954.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Skyline Skiway sat on a hill in Benson County, about three miles east of Fort Totten and ten miles south of Devils Lake. A Nordic ski jump came first: Ski Magazine, as quoted by Ghosts of North Dakota, says it ran from 1928 to 1936.1,2
Read the whole historyTodayMost of the old ski jump has blown down in a windstorm, leaving little of it standing.2
Timeline
4 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Skyline Skiway, 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 Skyline Skiway
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- Opened 1964 · 70.3 mi away · North DakotaA small ski hill a few miles outside Rolla, North Dakota, opened in 1964 and last mentioned in 1984.
- 1974–1983 · 115.3 mi away · North DakotaA small ski area near Minot, in the valley below the Gassman Coulee railroad trestle, that ran from 1974 to 1983 on surface lifts.
- Years not yet collected · 121.4 mi away · MinnesotaA small rope-tow ski area northwest of Red Lake Falls in northwestern Minnesota, running from about 1960 until the late 1970s.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 2 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Skyline Skiway sat on a hill in Benson County, about three miles east of Fort Totten and ten miles south of Devils Lake. A Nordic ski jump came first: Ski Magazine, as quoted by Ghosts of North Dakota, says it ran from 1928 to 1936. MWLSAP dates the ski area to 1954, gives it a 311-foot vertical, and also lists it as Lake Region Winter Sports Inc.1,2
The hill was home to the Lake Region Ski Club. MWLSAP lists Minneapolis ski reports from 1960 and 1961 and Bismarck Tribune ski features from 1987 to 1992 that cover it. Sources disagree on how long it lasted: Ghosts of North Dakota says it ran on and off into the early 1980s, a reader there recalls skiing into the mid-1990s, and MWLSAP gives its closing as 1995 or 1997.1,2
TodayMost of the old ski jump has blown down in a windstorm, leaving little of it standing.2
Sources for this history (2)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Lost Ski Areas of North Dakota: Skyline Skiway
- 2Ghosts of North Dakota · The Abandoned Skyline Skiway, Devils Lake (Troy Larson, September 3, 2016)
Photos
No photographs of Skyline Skiway 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 Skyline Skiway, in their own words.
Facts
Location
47.9890° N · 98.9285° W · North Dakota
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
from 1954 · the year it closed is 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.
Its numbers
all 1all 1, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain