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    New England Skiing
    New England Skiing
    New England Skiing
    Ebook194 pages25 minutes

    New England Skiing

    By E. John B. Allen

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    Skiing in New England has not always been such a breathtaking sport connected with winter vacations at distant and local resorts. From the early 1870s, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish immigrants utilized skis to carry the mail and to travel through the woods to school and work. Later, a group of college men at Dartmouth founded the Outing Club, which transformed skiing from everyday practicality into swift-moving recreation. Since that time, the excitement and exhilaration of skiing has spread nationwide. In this volume, we will explore the history of skiing in this region, from its early, simpler days of cross-country and jumping to the rising popularity of alpine skiing beginning in the 1930s. Rather than a technical history, this book concentrates on presenting a story that is fluid like the sport itself, focusing on places, personalities, and major innovations between the early 1870s and 1940.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439632284
    New England Skiing
    Author

    E. John B. Allen

    E. John B. Allen is emeritus professor of history at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

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      Book preview

      New England Skiing - E. John B. Allen

      Hampshire.

      INTRODUCTION

      In 1910, the Boston Sunday Herald interviewed Norwegian immigrant Dr. Andreas Christian, who rejoiced at the hundreds of skiers swarming over the suburban Newtons and Brooklines, Middlesex Falls, and Blue Hills. Skis were stacked on shop counters in Boston stores for people to enjoy the New Hampshire fields and dales 50 miles to the north, and the Berkshires were not to be belittled. The article was accompanied by eight large instructional photographs, and there were asides on the sport’s appeal for children, its inexpensiveness, and its benefits to the physical and mental health of men. For women, Dr. Christian assured his readers, skiing was also a great antidote for corsets.

      It is difficult to believe Dr. Christian’s assessment entirely, especially the number of participants and the availability of equipment, but it is no mistake that it was a Norwegian who was interviewed about skiing. It was, indeed, Scandinavians who had brought their 5,000-year-old ski culture with them to this country. The majority had settled in today’s Midwest, but those who are pictorially documented here came to New England. The community of New Sweden in northern Maine was brought over from old Sweden in 1870 by Widgery Thomas, U.S. consul and later ambassador to Sweden. Norwegians came to work in the woods of Berlin, New Hampshire, for the Brown paper company, and Finns came to Maine and Newport, Vermont. Skiing spread throughout New England around the turn of the century thanks to the immigrant Scandinavians. Their sort of skiing was essentially utilitarian; for loggers, mailmen, and schoolchildren, it was a means of getting about at times of deep snows.

      When some college men took up skiing, they turned it into a social sport. The Outing Club of Dartmouth College, founded in 1909, provided an impetus not only for the students and townspeople, but also for other colleges, towns, and villages which formed ski clubs from Maine to Connecticut and held competitions and carnivals in which the jump came to provide the greatest attraction. The images presented here try to demonstrate how an immigrant culture became an American sport.

      In the 1930s, a second wave of skiing immigrants, this time from the European Alps, brought the thrill of speed to skiing. The Norse cross-country and jumping gave way to Alpine downhill and slalom. At the same time, the sport became mechanized. Snow trains brought a new, city clientele to the snowy hills, where tows of varying efficiency pulled the skiers to the top, and down they plunged on trails named to inspire derring-do: Nose Dive, Undertaker’s Delight, and Devil’s Dip. These new-to-skiing folk needed to be taught how to manage a schuss and take a bump. Many bended ze kneez and happily paid their European instructors $2 for a lesson in the Arlberg technique, a low crouch and a lift and swing into the turn. Skiing in New England took off during the Depression. Once tows became established—we are talking here mostly about rope tows, as T-bars and chairlifts were rare prior to the Second World War—parking lots, restaurants, and inns all catered to the new and burgeoning winter business. Much of the labor of cutting trails was supplied by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

      There seemed no end to the possibilities of enjoyment that skiing could bring. The selection of drawings, photographs, postcards, and posters covers the various facets of the 1930s. This is the period when the ski artists first came on the American scene, and Dwight Shepler’s work is represented here. It is also the time when the journalists and photographers became important in spreading the joys of skiing. Look for the work of Christine Reid, Charles Trask, and Winston Pote. Maybe the most interesting photograph, historically, is that of Norman Libby, taken on Mt. Washington in 1907 and published here for the first time. Other rare photographs are the series on the construction of the Cannon Mountain tramway and the picture of Lowell Thomas leading a group of skiers into the Tuckerman Bowl.

      The final chapter covers Mt. Washington, which first felt the skier’s track in 1899. It was not until 1911 and 1912 that

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