With volunteers and snow,
community ski hills can thrive
This winter has not been great for Presque Isle’s Quoggy Jo Ski Center, but Glenn Parkinson, a life-long skier and ski historian, believes the community ski hill and others like it have a bright future.
Parkinson, a financial adviser in Portland who wrote “First Tracks: Stories from Maine’s Skiing Heritage,” was skiing at Quoggy Jo in early February, when he was visiting Presque Isle to watch the World Cup Biathlon.
“I think by 40 years I was the oldest guy there,” Parkinson said. “It was really fun to see all those 8- and 10-year-old kids out there, and just having fun. That’s where I learned how to ski. Those local areas are really important.”
Parkinson grew up in Vermont, skiing cross country and alpine and competing in ski jumping. After college, he moved to Maine to work in a ski shop in Livermore Falls, near Spruce Mountain Ski Slope in Jay and within a drive of dozens of ski hills and mountain resorts.
In the 1990s, he became fascinated with Maine’s skiing history: the Swedish immigrants who brought skiing to Aroostook County in 1870, the Bangor to Caribou ski marathons during the 1930s, and the more than 100 community ski hills that existed across the state through the 1970s.
“I saw some photos from the ‘20s and ‘30s, and it was a piece of skiing that I had never seen before,” Parkinson said. In the span of 100 years, he found, skiing in Maine evolved from a Scandinavian utilitarian form of a travel to a popular recreational pursuit.
In the late 1940s, a Fort Fairfield farmer started what would become the White Bunny Ski Hill when he set up a tow-rope to take skiers up a hill along Currier Road. Like many others at that time, Parkinson said, the tow rope was easily created by using a tractor with a special grooved tire.
While Maine’s alpine mountain resorts like Sugarloaf were just getting started in the 1950s and 1960s, local ski hills that were popular at the time were often run by a club or a farmer, Parkinson said.
“It was a great place to learn,” said Tom Chasse, owner of Bike, Board & Ski in Presque Isle, of White Bunny, which eventually had a T-bar, two trails, lights and a lodge, along with support from the town recreation budget.
The ski hill stopped operating in 1979, after the lodge burned down and insurance liability costs increased.
“Insurance got too high, people got busy it was hard to volunteer,” said Chasse, a life-long skier who helped run Quoggy Jo Ski Center. “As Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Bigrock and others made investments, it made it harder for these little places to compete.”
The Quoggy Jo ski hill was originally hosted at Quaggy Jo Mountain, in what is now Aroostook State Park, and it has been open at its current location since the 1960s, on donated land sharing rolling hills with the nearby Nordic Heritage Center. Quoggy Jo, which is largely run by parents and other volunteers, recently raised $50,000 through the Presque Isle Rotary Club for ongoing renovations and maintenance. A day pass to ride the T-bar is $8, and season passes are $125 or $250 for a family.
While many former ski hills remain lost and out of use, they may always be skiable in the future, Parkinson said. Some are also rebounding, including Mount Jefferson Ski Area in Lee, and when better snow arrives this winter or next, may help keep skiing accessible and affordable.
At Quoggy Jo, Parkinson met a young skier who in March is headed to Sugarloaf, Maine’s largest alpine ski mountain, after having skied at just Quoggy Jo and Bigrock Mountain in Mars Hill so far.
“That’s a big deal for him. That’s the way it used to be in the 1950s,” Parkinson said. “People always skied locally and once a year or twice a year, they’d go to the big ski areas.”
