Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Ski Starlite, also spelled Starlight, stood on State Road 60 near Memphis and Sellersburg in Clark County, about 13 miles from Louisville. Brown County Ski Mountain Resort Inc. spent two years building it on a 500-acre site at a projected $7 million, and offered stock to the public.1,3,4
Read the whole historyTimeline
5 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Starlight, 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 Starlight
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1981–1998 · 39.5 mi away · KentuckyA ski area inside General Butler State Resort Park at Carrollton that opened in 1981 and closed during the 1997–98 winter.
- 1979–2002 · 55.7 mi away · IndianaA chairlift ski area on State Road 46 west of Nashville in Brown County that opened in the 1979–80 winter, became Ski World in 1986 and closed around 2002.
- 1979–1982 · 56.6 mi away · IndianaA small Brown County ski area on State Road 46 just outside Nashville that opened in the 1979–80 winter and was seized for back taxes in 1982.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 5 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Ski Starlite, also spelled Starlight, stood on State Road 60 near Memphis and Sellersburg in Clark County, about 13 miles from Louisville. Brown County Ski Mountain Resort Inc. spent two years building it on a 500-acre site at a projected $7 million, and offered stock to the public. It had been slated to open by Christmas 1979; in October 1980 it was still six weeks out, with ten slopes, a 5,000-square-foot lodge and a seven-acre lake for snowmaking.1,3,4
Its main lift was a double-double chairlift: two pairs of cables carrying 236 double chairs about 500 feet up the hill, with a mid-station halfway. A 1982 columnist called it the longest chairlift and Trail 2, about a mile, the longest trail in Indiana, and found steep expert runs and gentle beginner slopes with little in between. By then the area had admitted to shaky finances, though it drew more than 25,000 skiers over 41 days that winter. In late 1981 it listed two double chairlifts, four platter lifts and eleven slopes.2,4,5
The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project dates the area from 1980 to 1984.1
Sources for this history (5)
- 1Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project · Indiana Lost Ski Areas
- 2The Republic · Four Southern Indiana Ski Resorts Ready for Winter Snow Skiing Season (Gary Lewis, The Republic, Columbus, November 14, 1981; scan on MWLSAP)
- 3The Evansville Press · Two resorts set up slopes in Nashville (John Kaminski, The Evansville Press, November 20, 1979; scan on MWLSAP)
- 4The Evansville Press · Huge ski resort six weeks away from its opening (Bill Greer, The Evansville Press, October 19, 1980; scan on MWLSAP)
- 5The Indianapolis News · Starlite Most Like Trails Of Colorado (David McCarty, The Indianapolis News, January 27, 1982; scan on MWLSAP)
Photos
No photographs of Starlight 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 Starlight, in their own words.
Facts
Location
38.4375° N · 85.8246° W · Indiana
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1980–1984
Closed after the 1984 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 3all 3, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain