I have driven across the country several times and I am always amazed at the strange places that do have downhill skiing even if it is only a Mom-and-Pop operation with only a tiny hill and some snow making equipment. For instance, I have heard that you can ski in Hawaii if you really want to and even some southern states offer skiing part of the year. This made me wonder which states have absolutely no outdoor commercial downhill snow skiing. The only states that I am sure that don’t are Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. The rest are still a possibility. Can you help me figure this out. If you reply, please modify my list so that we do not repeat ourselves.
State Offers Skiing?
Alabama - Not sure
Alaska - Yes
Arizona - Probably
Arkansas - Not Sure
California - Yes
Colorado - Yes
Connecticut - Probably
Delaware - Not Sure
Florida - No
Georgia - Not Sure
Hawaii - Maybe (Read something about this once)
Idaho - Yes
Illinois - Probably
Indiana - Maybe
Iowa - Maybe
Kansas - Maybe
Kentucky - Not Sure
Louisiana - No
Maine - Yes
Maryland - Not Sure
Massachusetts - Yes
Michigan - Not Sure
Minnesota - Yes
Mississippi - No
Missouri - Not Sure
Montana - Yes
Nebraska - Not Sure
Nevada - Not Sure
New Hampshire - Yes
New Jersey - Not Sure
New Mexico - Yes
New York - Yes
North Carolina - Yes
North Dakota - Not Sure
Ohio - Not Sure
Oklahoma - Not Sure
Oregon - Yes
Pennsylvania - Yes
Rhode Island - Not Sure
South Carolina - Not Sure
South Dakota - Not Sure
Tennessee - Not Sure
Texas - No?
Utah - Yes
Vermont - Yes
Virginia - Yes
Washington - Yes
West Virginia - Yes
Wisconsin - Not Sure
Wyoming - Yes
Alabama has at least one ski slope – Cloudmont Golf & Ski Resort. It ain’t much, but it does feature a ski slope. It’s in the northeast corner of the state, above Fort Payne, roughly 40 miles south of Chattanooga.
Definitely not. Snow only accumulates in the panhandle and far northwestern region of the state for anything more than a week at a time. Those areas are unremarkably flat for the most part.
there is, or at least used to be, a guide service that provided ski and snowboard tours of Mauna Kea. Does that make it a commercial operation? No lifts, lodges, etc.
The only other thing I have to contribute is about Rhode Island. The Ocean State has one and only one downhill ski area…Yawgoo, which as of last year was still open. I have never been there, but it always somehow manages to hold on.
If you’re interested in mom and pop ski operations, you might want to check out
The New England Lost Ski Areas Project. There’s a big list of now defunct areas, some with maps, pictures, etc. I find many of the entries rather poignant.
Take Nebraska off the list. My family lives just a few miles south of “Prairie Hills,” a man-made ski area. There’s also one near Lincoln, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find some up in the Sandhills.
Arkansas has none, unless someone’s opened one recently.
When I was a kid, however, the story was different. Someone (someone named Jess Odom, actually) got the bright idea to build a winter sports complex at Marble Falls, right next to the Dogpatch U.S.A. theme park. They had miserable luck with the weather and other problems for four years, and finally packed it in for good in 1977 (I lived seven miles away from Dogpatch/Marble Falls in 1975-1976). You can read the whole sordid Dogpatch/Marble Falls saga on Russ Johnson’s Arkansas Traveler pages.
Hmmm… I guess it’s not there any more. I lived in Wichita for three of the last four years, and nobody in any of the ski shops there (yes, they do have ski shops!) had heard of any ski operations of any kind in Kansas. We had to drive eight hours to Colorado Springs.
