America's 5 Oldest Ski Resorts To Visit Are Dripping With Nostalgic Charm

More Americans are skiing today than ever before. In the 2024-25 season, the approximately 500 active ski areas across the United States had 61.5 million visits, a number exceeded only by the 65.4 million visits made during the extra-snowy 2022-23 season. In fact, three of the five busiest ski seasons ever recorded have happened since 2020.

But while it's currently having a moment, the history of skiing in the United States stretches back further than you might expect. The sport came over from Europe in the mid-19th century, when Norwegian miners were lured to the U.S. by the California gold rush. In 1872, the Nansen Ski Club, the first in North America, was founded in Berlin, New Hampshire, and more groups followed suit in the years after, including the formation of the National Ski Association in 1905.

The places those early skiers practiced their sport looked a bit different than modern ski areas. For one thing, the first chairlift wasn't installed until 1936, and many of today's popular ski resorts, like Vail Mountain and Mammoth Mountain, weren't founded until the 1950s. While many states got their first ski resort in the 1930s or 1940s, there were a few early adopters paving the way as far back as 1915, and some of these first resorts are still open for visitors today. We dug into their history to find the oldest ski areas in the United States, based on when each built its first facilities or infrastructure (usually a ski jump) and opened it to the public. If you want a dash of nostalgia with your wintry fun, the five resorts below are the oldest you'll find in the United States.

As the oldest continuously operated ski area in the United States, Howelsen Hill has a storied history that goes back to 1915. It's named for decorated Norwegian skier Carl Howelsen, who built a ski jump in Steamboat Springs for its Winter Carnival (which he also helped to organize). The Winter Carnival still happens every February, celebrating its 113th year in 2026, while the elk pasture where the jump was built is now Howelsen Hill. The ski area has grown into North America's largest natural ski jumping complex and is a renowned winter sports training ground. Around 100 Olympians have trained here for 179 Winter Olympics appearances, the most skiers sent to international competitions of any training area in North America.

Steamboat Springs is a bustling city, the largest in northwest Colorado, and the winter sports season typically runs from early December through late March. The cheapest day to enjoy the slopes is Sunday. That's when Howelsen Hill offers free lift tickets and trail access, harkening back to the early days when Howelsen's ski jump was a crowdfunded community venture rather than a for-profit business.

Among skiers, Steamboat Springs is famous for its "champagne powder," which has a lower water content than most snow (about 6% rather than the 15% typically found elsewhere). This snow is lighter and less likely to clump, letting skiers move faster and make smoother turns. There's plenty of space to experience it on Howelsen Hill's 50 skiable acres, where you'll find 17 alpine trails, 13 miles of Nordic trails, a freestyle mogul run, a terrain park, and several ski jumps. It's also one of the best sledding destinations in Colorado if you want a more low-key way to enjoy the snow.

Located in the rustic mountain escape of Wrightwood, Mountain High Resort is one of the closest ski areas to Los Angeles, roughly a 90-minute drive outside the city in the San Gabriel Mountains. It's also easy to reach from San Diego or the San Fernando Valley, and that accessibility is part of why it's one of the most popular ski resorts in Southern California.

Mountain High first opened as Big Pines Park in 1924. Ski jumps, added in 1929 and 1931, quickly became the site of record-setting jumps, including a world-record 243-foot jump by Alf Engen in 1931. It was renamed to the Blue Ridge Ski Area in 1941, and, in 1981, it was merged with the neighboring Holiday Hill resort to create the Mountain High Ski Area. Many features from those earlier resorts survived, including the North Lodge, one of the oldest base lodges in the region. It still looks like it did in the 1940s, and the rustic decor of on-site restaurants like the Bullwheel Bar & Grill and North Lodge Grill & Pub will make you feel like you stepped into the past.

Mountain High Ski Area covers 290 skiable acres and offers activities for every skill level. The North Resort has low terrain ideal for beginners, while the East Resort has Southern California's longest skiing trails with an upper elevation of 8,200 feet. The West Resort is the most popular, its terrain park and trails remaining open until 10 p.m. every night during the skiing season. Yeti's Snow Play at the East Resort has tubing, sledding, and snow play areas for kids, and equipment can be rented on-site – just make sure to reserve whatever you'll need in advance of your visit.

Despite its smaller size, New Hampshire boasts an impressive variety of popular ski resorts. The largest, Bretton Woods in the White Mountains, has some of the best downhill skiing on the East Coast, while North Conway, home to Cranmore Mountain Resort, is considered America's best ski town.

New Hampshire also has one of the oldest ski areas in the country, Storrs Hill Ski Area, which opened when its first ski jump, The Scrape, was built in 1925. It was one of eight ski jumps built in Lebanon by Erling Heistad, who founded the Lebanon Outing Club that still runs Storrs Hill. In 1931, it added its first alpine ski trail, cut by a team that included Olympian Nils Backstrom. A lodge and tow rope were added in 1935, also putting the resort among the nation's first lift-served ski areas.

Storrs Hill is near the New Hampshire-Vermont border in Lebanon, roughly an hour south of Montpelier and about the same distance northwest of Concord. During the season (usually late December through mid-March), it's open for public skiing on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It's a relatively small resort, with 20 skiable acres that include seven trails and one 50-meter ski jump, and it doesn't offer any ski rentals. The closest shop for day rentals is Henderson Ski & Snowboard in Quechee, so you'll want to stop there first if you don't have your own equipment. That's all you'll have to pay for, though. Starting in 2024, Storrs Hill began offering free lift tickets and trail access throughout its open season, something the Outing Club plans to continue as long as the donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation allows.

The variety of sights and activities on the shores of Lake Tahoe makes it a popular destination any time of year, but it's especially known for skiing, with 15 resorts that are regularly rated among the top ski spots on the West Coast. Of these, Granlibakken is the oldest. Tahoe City locals skied here at least as far back as 1922, when it was known as Ski Canyon. In 1926, Tahoe Tavern owner D.L. Bliss built a ski jump and toboggan slide that were used for exhibitions and races, along with winter fun for the tavern's guests. In 1947, Norwegian entrepreneur Kjell "Rusty" Rustad leased the Tahoe Tavern Winter Sports Grounds to build a ski hill and lodge, which he named Granlibakken, Norwegian for "a hillside sheltered by fir trees."

Granlibakken is just south of Tahoe City, on the California side of Lake Tahoe's north shore, close to other popular winter sports destinations. It's 19 miles from Diamond Peak, the community-owned ski resort considered Lake Tahoe's best-kept secret, and 8 miles from Palisades Tahoe, regarded as one of the best ski resorts in California and host of the Winter Olympics in 1960. This expands your options for trails and slopes, though there's plenty to enjoy right at Granlibakken.

Cross-country skiers can start on the 1.5-mile trail through the 74-acre property, or take the groomed access trail to the Paige Meadows loop to head deeper into the backcountry. Alpine skiers and snowboarders can experience the same hill that Rusty Rustad created. As one of the most family-friendly ski hills around Lake Tahoe, its simplicity makes it a good choice for beginners. You can also take lessons or rent equipment on-site throughout the season, which usually runs from mid-November through May.

As the highest peak in Oregon, Mount Hood is well-known for outdoor adventure. In the summer, hikers can explore more than 1,000 miles of trails, including the Timberline Trail, known as one of America's most grueling hikes. Come winter, Mount Hood's southern slope becomes a snowy paradise, one that skiers and snowboarders have flocked to for decades. This is where you'll find Timberline Lodge, one of the oldest mountain ski lodges in the Pacific Northwest, which was built by hand in 1937.

Timberline Lodge was about a decade late to the party. The oldest ski area near Mount Hood — which is also the oldest in the Pacific Northwest — is the Summit Ski Area located along Highway 26. It was built in 1927 as a rescue base but has evolved into a winter sports hub that's conveniently close to the restaurants and shops of Government Camp. Timberline Lodge acquired the ski area in 2018, but little changed aside from an official renaming to Timberline Summit Pass. The current tubing hill started as the Red Devil ski hill in 1938, and most of the trails were cut right after World War II. Anyone who skied Summit as a kid can get their nostalgia fix hanging out in the lodge (built in 1966) or riding the chairlift that's been there since 1980. 

The Summit Ski Area is known for being beginner-friendly, but there are more challenging trails to be found in its 1,685 skiable acres. Summit is at the bottom of Timberline's 4,540-foot vertical, at an elevation of 4,000 feet, so its snow melts sooner than trails closer to the top. Thus, the season for Summit usually runs from mid-November through mid-April, while the higher elevation areas often stay open through late May.

Our starting points for this article were Powder's post on the eight oldest ski resorts in the U.S. and 24/7 Wall St.'s list of the oldest ski areas in every state. Assigning a definitive opening date for some resorts can be tricky since, in many cases, the slopes were used by locals before the current version of the ski area officially debuted. So, for the purposes of this list, we used the construction date of the first jump, slide, or similar infrastructure or improvement. We also limited our list to ski areas that are open to the public, omitting spots like Easton Ski Area in Massachusetts, which has been open since the 1920s but only for private use by the athletic program of Eaglebrook School.

Determining the "nostalgic charm" of each resort was a more subjective process. The first thing we looked at was whether the area retains any original features that date back to its first decade of existence. We also considered aspects of the resort that would be familiar to someone who skied there as a child and returned today as an adult. Finally, we considered the atmosphere and design of each property, with an eye towards those with a rustic design that harkens back to an earlier era.