{"title":"Lost Mountains","description":"\u003cp\u003eTheir bullwheels and ropetows may have stopped turning, but we haven't forgotten them.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"vintage-agamenticus-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"Mt. Agamenticus Ski Patch (Caricature Logo) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Mt. Agamenticus ski patch from York, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, arched-top with a blue merrowed border on a cream ground. The figure on it is a caricature of a Native American — pink skin, a long nose, a single feather in a headband — running forward with a tomahawk raised. AGAMENTICUS in blue beside a red A at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eListed as a record of what the hill printed, not as a thing to celebrate. Agamenticus is an Abenaki place name, and the mountain ran this mark into the seventies before the ski area faded out. It is here because taking it out of the record does not take it out of the history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAgamenticus is a 690-foot hill about six miles from the Atlantic, and for a stretch of years it supported a genuine ski area with a chairlift on it. Six hundred and ninety feet. You can see the ocean from the top.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat was not considered absurd at the time. If a hill had enough pitch to slide down and a road to get to it, somebody would try, and a surprising number of those attempts worked for twenty or thirty years. The sport was not yet organized around vertical feet and snowfall averages. It was organized around whether there was somewhere to go on Sunday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe area closed in the mid-seventies and the summit is conservation land now, with a road up it and a view. The mountain is entirely still there. The lift is not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs for the axe: no idea. He seems pleased about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCoastal Maine in winter is a strange place to ski and was never going to sustain a lift operation forever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537891213617,"sku":"RV-ME-114","price":95.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-agamenticus-embroidered-patch.jpg?v=1785621225"},{"product_id":"bald-mountain-dedham-maine-embroidered-patch","title":"Bald Mountain Ski Patch, Dedham, Maine — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Bald Mountain ski patch from Dedham, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, a rectangle with scalloped shoulders and a black merrowed border — BALD MOUNTAIN in black on a blue sky, a white-headed bald eagle in profile with a gold beak filling the middle, and below it a green band with a white summit mark and DEDHAM MAINE. Bald mountain, bald eagle. Nobody thought about it for long and it is better for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBald mountain, bald eagle. Nobody involved thought about this for more than four seconds and the result is better than anything a longer meeting would have produced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a whole genre of this: small ski areas solving their design problem by taking the name absolutely literally and drawing the first thing that came to mind. It produced some of the most memorable graphics in the business, entirely by accident, because nobody was trying to make something memorable. They were trying to get the patches ordered before the season started.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDedham is inland from the coast, a long way from anywhere anybody would call a destination. The hill is not operating. The eagle, as far as anybody knows, was never seen on the premises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is also, as a piece of drawing, considerably better than it needed to be. Somebody took the job seriously even though the brief was a pun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537893802289,"sku":"RV-ME-113","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-bald-mountain-patch.webp?v=1785621334"},{"product_id":"vintage-rangeley-bald-mountain-ski-way-embroidered-patch","title":"Rangeley Bald Mt. Ski Way Patch, Felt — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Rangeley Bald Mt. Ski Way patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1950s, cut from a round of cream felt with no applied border — a red ring chain-stitched around the edge carrying RANGELEY BALD MT. ME. over the top and SKI WAY around the foot, and in the middle a figure in red and black standing upright on his skis with one arm raised.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSki Way. Not area, not resort, not mountain. That word puts this in the fifties or very early sixties, when the vocabulary of the sport had not settled and every operator was calling their hill whatever sounded right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEverything about the construction says the same thing. Felt ground rather than twill. Chain stitch rather than the dense satin fill that came later. Two thread colors, because more than two cost more than the job was worth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is close to as early as New England ski patches get. It was made by a process that was already old when it was new, for a hill that was charging a couple of dollars, for customers who were skiing on wood with leather bindings and getting down however they could.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePatches this old are also frequently mistaken for later reproductions, because the construction looks crude to an eye trained on modern embroidery. Crude is the tell. Nobody reproducing a patch for the collector market chain-stitches it onto felt in two colors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, cut edge, no applied border. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537893900593,"sku":"RV-ME-112","price":125.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-rangeley-ski-patch.webp?v=1785621353"},{"product_id":"vintage-bald-mountain-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Bald Mountain Ski Patch, Rangeley, Maine — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Bald Mt. ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, a pointed shield with a red merrowed border — a blue sky above a white snowfield cut on the diagonal, a skier in red folded into a tuck across it, BALD MT. in red at the top and RANGELEY ME. in red at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the same patch as the Saddleback shield a few listings over — same shape, same sky, same diagonal snowfield, same red skier, same hand. Two rival Rangeley mountains, four miles apart, buying from the same mill and getting the same drawing with a different name stitched across the top. That happened constantly and almost nobody notices it, because you have to own both to see it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRangeley is a town of roughly twelve hundred people with a lake, a main street, and at one point two ski mountains. Bald was the smaller one, and it ran before Saddleback took over the region's attention entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the most common way a ski area dies, and it has nothing to do with bad management or bad snow. A bigger hill opens nearby with a longer lift and more vertical, and within a few seasons the people who used to come here are driving past the turn. The small mountain does not fail dramatically. It just stops being the obvious choice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTwo mountains, one town, and only one of them still sells tickets. Both of them printed patches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is unusual about Rangeley is that both mountains kept operating alongside each other for years. Normally the smaller one folds inside a decade. This one hung on long enough to produce a reasonable quantity of souvenirs, which is why you are reading this at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537893933361,"sku":"RV-ME-111","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-bald-mountain-ski-patch.webp?v=1785621382"},{"product_id":"vintage-enchanted-mountain-embroidered-sew-on-patch","title":"Enchanted Mountain Ski Patch, Sealed (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Enchanted Mountain ski patch from Jackman, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: an arched shield with a white merrowed border, a deep blue sky, a turreted white castle standing on a white summit, a yellow moon hung at the upper left and one dark bird crossing beneath it. ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN in yellow along the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the best drawing in the Maine collection and it is still in the bag. Sealed stock from an area that is long quiet, with artwork nobody would commission today from a mountain nobody can ski — it is the only patch here where every single thing that makes one of these worth owning happens to line up at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJackman sits fifteen miles from the Quebec border, in a county with more logging road than pavement. For a run of winters in the seventies it had a ski area, and somebody there decided to call it Enchanted Mountain. Not Eagle. Not Summit. Not Northern Peak. Enchanted. Then somebody had to draw the patch, and whoever got that job made a choice no committee would approve today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat gap is the entire point. The people who cut these small mountains were not selling a destination. They were selling the idea that on a Saturday twenty minutes from your house, something slightly magic was going on, and that you could be back by supper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe lifts are gone. The castle is still up there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896718641,"sku":"RV-ME-105","price":135.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-enchanted-mountain-patch.jpg?v=1785621756"},{"product_id":"vintage-gorham-kiwanis-ski-slope-embroidered-patch","title":"Gorham Kiwanis Ski Slope Patch — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Gorham Kiwanis Ski Slope patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, round with a gold merrowed border — a navy ring carrying GORHAM KIWANIS arched in gold across the top and SLOPE across the bottom, and inside it a gold disc with white peaks and SKI in heavy navy caps, the I drawn as a ski standing on end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA service club built a ski slope for a town. That sentence used to be entirely unremarkable in New England and now reads like something out of a different country — the Kiwanis raised the money, cleared the hill, ran the tow and put the lights in, so that the children of Gorham would have somewhere to go in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody does this anymore. The liability alone would end the conversation in the first meeting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe slope ran on volunteers, which meant it ran until the volunteers got tired, which is a more common cause of death than bankruptcy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896784177,"sku":"RV-ME-104","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-gorham-kiwanis-ski-patch.jpg?v=1792336368"},{"product_id":"vintage-hurricane-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Hurricane Ski Area Patch, Falmouth (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Hurricane ski patch from Falmouth, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, a pointed shield with a red merrowed border — HURRICANE in navy across the top over FALMOUTH, MAINE, a skier in red mid-turn, one small green fir, white peaks behind, and a blue wave curling up out of the bottom corner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA small hill just outside Portland that ran in the middle of the century and then stopped. No lifts now, no lodge, no sign at the road, and nothing on the ground to tell you anything ever happened there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA few thousand people learned to ski on it. That is not a guess — that is simply what a hill near a city does for twenty or thirty years. Every one of them has a first-day story and almost every one of those stories has now gone with the person who had it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHurricane is the pure case of what this whole catalog is about. There is no building to photograph, no historical society file, no anniversary to mark. There is a name, a location, and a patch with a skier on it, and if the patch goes, there is a name and a location.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePortland has grown out toward it in every direction since. Whatever that hill was, it is somebody's neighborhood now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896882481,"sku":"RV-ME-103","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-hurricane-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785621812"},{"product_id":"vintage-may-mountain-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"May Mountain Ski Patch, Sealed (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage May Mountain ski patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round patch with a white merrowed border, a blue upper field carrying May in white blackletter, three white peaks across the middle, and a lime-green lower field with Mountain beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe design is generic almost to the point of anonymity — it could be any mountain in any state, drawn by anybody. Which is exactly why the name had to be stitched on, and exactly why the patch matters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStrip the lettering off this and it becomes decoration. With the lettering it is evidence: proof that a place called May Mountain existed in Maine, sold souvenirs, and had enough of a business to justify ordering a run of patches from a mill.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is a low bar and it is also, for a great many of these hills, the only bar they cleared. Nobody is coming along later to establish it some other way. The patch is the document.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCollectors mostly ignore patches like this, because there is no story attached and nothing visually remarkable about them. That is precisely the gap. The mountains that are genuinely gone are gone partly because nobody found them interesting enough to write down at the time, and the quiet patches are the ones doing the most work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898291505,"sku":"RV-ME-097","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-may-mountain-patch.jpg?v=1785622016"},{"product_id":"pine-haven-vintage-embroidered-skiing-patch","title":"Pine Haven Ski Area Patch (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Pine Haven patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, cut as a pointed gothic arch with a red merrowed border — an olive-green ground with one white trail winding down from the top, a skier in red halfway along it, two pale firs standing at the bottom corners and PINE HAVEN in black on a white band at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePine Haven belongs to the long and badly documented list of small Maine hills that ran a tow, taught two or three towns to ski, and then closed without anybody writing it down.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere were hundreds of these in New England. A farmer's slope with a rope tow driven off a truck engine. A town hill with lights and a warming shed run by volunteers. They charged almost nothing, they operated for as long as somebody was willing to do the work, and when that person got old or the insurance got expensive, they stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNo archive collected them. The local paper may have run two inches when it opened and nothing at all when it closed. What exists is this: a patch, made in some quantity, sold at a counter, and now the most substantial surviving record of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRope tows were powered by whatever was available — a truck engine, a tractor, in at least one documented case a washing machine motor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898389809,"sku":"RV-ME-096","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-pine-haven-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785622060"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-manchester-vermont-skiing-snowman-patch","title":"Snow Valley Snowman Patch, Manchester — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Manchester, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, featuring the same red-hatted snowman holding his skis upright — here moved off felt and onto cream twill, given an arched top and a gold merrowed border. Snow Valley in red script over MANCHESTER, VT. in blue.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe turns up on more than one Snow Valley patch, which means somebody there understood what they had. A mountain with a mascot has something the mountain next door does not: a face, and a reason for a child to want the sticker.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eForty years after the lifts stopped, he is doing work nobody intended. He is the reason these patches get picked up off a table instead of passed over, the reason the name Snow Valley means anything at all to people born after it closed, and the reason the mountain has any public memory whatsoever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA ski area is a business, a payroll and a snow report. When all of that goes, what is left is whatever somebody once drew to make it look friendly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a small, odd industry in reproducing these for people who want the nostalgia without the object. Those are easy to spot and worth nothing. This is not one of them — it is the actual article, made for an actual ski area, sold at an actual counter to somebody who was actually there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920345121073,"sku":"RV-VT-073","price":105.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-ski-patch.webp?v=1787703086"},{"product_id":"vintage-ski-dutch-hill-embroidered-patch","title":"Ski Dutch Hill Patch (Round) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Ski Dutch Hill patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, featuring a skier in a yellow jacket dropping past a bare blue tree on a pale slope. Round, gold merrowed border, SKI DUTCH HILL stacked in navy block caps with HEARTWELLVILLE VT. beneath. The same artwork as the sealed one, out of the bag and into a life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe hill closed in 1985. For twenty years after that it was simply woods with an odd shape to them. Then people started going back — not with lifts or permits or a business plan, but with chainsaws and hand saws, cutting the glades back open a few trees at a time so that the terrain could be skied by anybody willing to walk up it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is happening at a number of dead New England ski areas now, and it is the only genuinely hopeful thing in the whole lost-mountain story. The lifts are not coming back. But the hill is still a hill, and the snow still falls on it, and there is a small determined population of people who consider that sufficient.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis patch is the paperwork from the first version. Somebody is out there right now making the second one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is no ticket, no patrol and no guarantee of anything. There is also no lift line, which a certain kind of person considers an even trade.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920371532081,"sku":"RV-VT-070","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-ski-dutch-hill-patch.webp?v=1787703144"},{"product_id":"vintage-dutch-hill-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Dutch Hill Ski Patch (Blue \u0026 Yellow Skier) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Dutch Hill ski patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, featuring the same head-on skier in blue with red pole grips — here on an older, softer ground where the gold ring has gone matte and the white lettering has dulled toward cream. Round, SKI above and DUTCH HILL below.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe drive was Route 8 out of Readsboro, up into the hills toward the Massachusetts line, through country that is still mostly empty. There was a T-bar. There was a hut. There was, by all accounts, a very good beginner slope and a couple of trails steep enough to be interesting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNone of that is unusual. What is unusual is how completely it vanished. A ski area is almost entirely made of things that do not last — a lift, a shed, a parking lot, a sign at the turn — and once the maintenance stops, the woods take about fifteen years to make the whole thing ambiguous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat survives is paper and cloth. A trail map in somebody's basement, a lift ticket in a coat pocket, and patches like this one, which are now the most durable object the business ever produced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe patches travel further than anything else. A lift stays where it was built. A patch goes in a pocket, then a drawer, then a box, then across three states in the back of a moving van.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with honest wear. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920382148913,"sku":"RV-VT-064","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-dutch-hill-ski-patch.webp?v=1787703287"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-vermont-embroidered-patch","title":"Snow Valley Vermont Patch, Sealed — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Winhall, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round navy patch with a lime-green disc set off-center across it, a six-point snowflake laid over the join, and SNOW VALLEY \/ VERMONT ringing the edge — navy letters where they cross the green, green letters where they cross the navy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSnow Valley was cut among the first wave in southern Vermont, back when the business model was simply: find a hill near a road, clear some trees, install something that pulls people up it. There were no studies. Somebody looked at a slope and decided.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe bag is the whole argument. A patch you can see through plastic is one nobody has trimmed, re-backed, steamed or repaired, and those things are done far more often than the trade likes to admit. Sealed stock from a mountain that closed in 1984 means somebody bought it, put it in a drawer, and then life happened for forty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAn enormous number of those bets paid off for twenty or thirty years and then stopped paying. The mountains that survived were the ones that could borrow enough to buy snowmaking in the seventies. The ones that could not became woods again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSnow Valley closed in 1984 and is now firmly in the second category. This patch is from the stretch when nobody involved knew which way it was going to go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the lost areas worth collecting is not scarcity. It is that each one was somebody's home mountain. Every closed hill in New England has a few hundred people still alive who learned there, who can still describe the layout of the base lodge, and who have nowhere to go and nothing to look at. The patch is the only thing left that is the right shape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920384835889,"sku":"RV-VT-061","price":60.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-vermont-patch.webp?v=1787703352"},{"product_id":"vintage-carinthia-ski-area-embroidered-patch","title":"Carinthia Ski Area Patch (Lost Mountain) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Carinthia Ski Area patch from Wilmington, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring a single race gate standing alone in an empty snowfield — one pole, a red panel above a blue one, planted on a white slope under a flat blue sky. Round, black merrowed border, Carinthia in yellow script across the top and SKI AREA arched along the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCarinthia, Wilmington, Vermont — its own ski area, with its own management, its own base lodge and its own small loyal following, right up until 1986.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe flags are the interesting part. A small independent mountain putting gates on its patch is a mountain that ran a race program, which means a club, which means kids, coaches, timing equipment and somebody's father standing at the bottom in the cold with a clipboard. All of that machinery existed here and then was absorbed into a larger operation and disappeared as a separate thing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhen a mountain gets bought, the trails usually survive. The institution almost never does. This is a patch from an institution.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is the real cost of consolidation, and it almost never shows up in the coverage. A bigger company buys a smaller one, keeps the terrain, improves the lifts, and quietly dissolves the club, the race program, the staff who had worked there twenty years and the particular culture that none of it can be reconstituted from afterward.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with a loose thread at the border. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920391749937,"sku":"RV-VT-057","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-carinthia-ski-patch.webp?v=1787703451"},{"product_id":"vintage-dutch-hill-ski-resort-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Dutch Hill Ski Patch (Blue, Yellow \u0026 Red) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Dutch Hill ski patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring a skier coming straight at you in a blue suit and a white cap, red pole grips flung wide, standing on gold skis between two mounds of snow. Round, medium blue ground inside a gold ring, SKI arched in white across the top and DUTCH HILL around the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHeartwellville, Vermont. A T-bar, a warming hut, a rope tow for beginners, and forty winters of southern Vermont families who could not afford Stratton and did not want to drive to Stowe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat was the model for a huge number of these places. Not a destination, not a resort — a hill twenty minutes from home with a ticket price a mill worker could justify, where the whole town's children learned on the same slope and the same two people ran the whole operation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe economics stopped working in the eighties and they stopped working everywhere at once. Dutch Hill closed in 1985. The Forest Service holds the land now, the trails have gone to trees, and the only people up there are the ones who walk in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody is making more of these.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat killed them all at once was snowmaking. The moment a mountain two valleys over could guarantee a season, a hill that depended on weather was finished, and every bank in New England understood that before the owners did.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920394895665,"sku":"RV-VT-053","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-dutch-hill-ski-patch_6e6ca7c0-4500-49bb-84cc-49b92d4aca28.webp?v=1787703542"},{"product_id":"vintage-ski-dutch-hill-heartwellville-vermont-embroidered-patch","title":"Ski Dutch Hill Patch, Sealed — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Ski Dutch Hill patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round patch with a gold merrowed border, a skier in a yellow jacket dropping past a bare blue tree, and SKI DUTCH HILL over HEARTWELLVILLE VT. in navy block caps.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the rarest combination in the entire catalog, and the reason is arithmetic. New-old-stock requires somebody to have bought a thing and never used it. A dead mountain requires the place to have stopped existing. Both at once means the patch had to survive forty years of house moves and clear-outs with nobody ever deciding it was junk — from a ski area that closed in 1985 and that almost nobody now remembers was ever there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDutch Hill sat at Heartwellville, off Route 8 in Readsboro, and ran for about forty winters on a T-bar and a warming hut. It is national forest now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody bought this at the bottom of that hill, with no idea it was among the last printings, and then simply never got to it. The bag has outlasted the lifts, the lodge, the road signs and the business.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMost of what we handle came off a jacket. This came off a shelf, and the shelf belonged to a business that no longer exists in any form.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920395452721,"sku":"RV-VT-052","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-ski-dutch-hill-patch_bd79a836-067b-40c1-8dfd-d54f86a84d1e.webp?v=1787703560"},{"product_id":"vintage-ski-dutch-mountain-embroidered-patch","title":"Ski Dutch Mt. Patch, Sealed — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Ski Dutch Mt. patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round patch with a gold merrowed border, a skier in a yellow jacket dropping past a bare blue tree, and SKI DUTCH MT. over HEARTWELLVILLE VT. in navy block caps.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSouthern Vermont, and almost certainly Dutch Hill at Heartwellville going by a shorter name — mountains shortened themselves on merchandise all the time, because the mill charged by the stitch and nobody was being precise about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDutch Hill sold patches reading both Dutch Mt. and Dutch Hill, from the same maker, with the same artwork, in the same bag. Nobody has ever explained why. Collectors who care about the place want the pair, and the pair is harder to assemble than it sounds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDutch Hill ran from the mid-1940s until 1985. Then the lifts came down and the Green Mountain National Forest quietly took the hill back, which is a gentler end than most of them got.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGo up Route 8 today and you can still find it. The old lift line is the place where the second-growth is a different age than everything around it, and the grade goes strange in a way that no natural hillside does. Volunteers cut glades in there now with hand tools. It is skiing again, after a fashion, without a lift or a ticket or a name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWalk it in October and the beginner slope is unmistakable. It is the only flat open ground on that whole hillside, and it is slowly filling in from the edges.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920402137393,"sku":"RV-VT-048","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-ski-dutch-mountain-patch.webp?v=1787703666"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-manchester-vermont-embroidered-patch","title":"Snow Valley Manchester Patch, Felt — c. 1950s-60s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Manchester, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1950s or early 60s, worked on a small round of cream felt with a navy ring chain-stitched around the edge by hand. Snow Valley in navy script, MANCHESTER VERMONT in red block beneath. No skier, no mountain, no snowflake — just the words, which is all the mountain has left anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJust the words Snow Valley, Manchester, Vermont, stitched plainly and left to stand on their own — which is either the most confident patch in this catalog or the cheapest one to produce, and at this distance there is no way to tell which.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt reads differently now than it did then. When this was made, the name was a destination and everybody in the region knew where it was. Today it is just three words on a piece of cloth, and the only thing they point to is the fact that there used to be something there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEvery lost mountain ends up as a name eventually. This one started that way.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA few things make a name like this hold on. A road still carries it. A pond is named after the hill. Somebody's grandmother says it in conversation and a younger person has to ask. Then the road gets renumbered, the grandmother dies, and the word stops meaning a place and starts meaning nothing in particular. That is roughly where Snow Valley is now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, hand-worked edge, with loose threads where the stitch has let go. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56978780848433,"sku":"RV-VT-035","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-vermont-patch_61f1cc82-ac71-4e8a-9c64-15f6fbe9c3dc.webp?v=1792339588"},{"product_id":"vintage-carinthia-ski-area-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Carinthia Patch (Star Emblem) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Carinthia Ski Area patch from Wilmington, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring the name in heavy red serif lettering with a four-pointed star burst set against the last letter. Cream twill, rounded corners, SKI AREA in small block caps underneath, the whole thing ringed in a red merrowed border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCarinthia is a province in southern Austria, and in the 1960s somebody in Wilmington, Vermont decided that was the right name for a small independent ski area on the shoulder of a hill in the Deerfield Valley. The whole period worked like that. If you wanted skiing to sound serious, you borrowed a word from somewhere with real mountains.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt ran on its own for roughly two decades — modest, separate, with its own lifts, its own ticket and its own patches. Mount Snow bought it in 1986.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe name survived the sale, which is the part that makes this strange. There is still a Carinthia at Mount Snow. It is the terrain park. Teenagers ride there on a thing named after an Austrian province by way of an independent ski area none of them has heard of, and the chain of custody runs straight through this patch.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is the only case in this catalog of a lost ski area's name outliving the ski area by forty years and counting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56978782945585,"sku":"RV-VT-034","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-carinthia-ski-patch_4fd1f8ec-5270-412f-95c4-bec32f4d5a67.webp?v=1792339604"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-manchester-vermont-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Snow Valley Manchester Patch, Felt (Skier) — c. 1950s-60s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Manchester, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1950s or early 60s, featuring a skier in blue and red running across two red-outlined peaks with small blue trees scattered behind him. Round cream felt, a navy ring chain-stitched near the edge, SNOW VALLEY arched in red over the top and MANCHESTER, VT. around the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFour decades of operation, and then nothing at all. Snow Valley sat off Route 11 between Manchester and Londonderry, it taught a very large number of people from Connecticut and New York how to ski, and in 1984 it stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe land is still there. The cut of the trails is still legible from the air if you know what you are looking at, and there are lift footings in the trees for anybody willing to go and find them. That is the entire physical remainder of a business that ran for forty winters and employed half a town.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA ski area leaves almost nothing behind. No ruins worth the name, no plaque, no marker at the road. It leaves a clearing that slowly stops being a clearing, and it leaves patches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a particular feeling standing in an old lift line that is now just a clearing. The pitch is still right. The trees are the wrong age. Everything about the shape of the land tells you people used to come here in numbers, and nothing else does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, hand-worked edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56978784944433,"sku":"RV-VT-033","price":95.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-ski-patch_c17e40f2-a972-4c3a-98ad-728a4f655289.webp?v=1792339622"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-vermont-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Snow Valley Shield Patch (Lost Mountain) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring four gold skis standing upright side by side at the base of a pointed blue shield, a single white snowflake floating beside the lettering. SNOW in red block caps outlined in white, VALLEY VERMONT stacked underneath, navy merrowed border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSnow Valley was one of the earliest areas cut in southern Vermont and one of the first to go under. It closed in 1984, squeezed out by neighbors with deeper pockets and better snowmaking, at the exact moment that making your own snow stopped being optional and became the price of staying open.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is how most of them died. Not a dramatic collapse — a run of thin winters, a loan that could not be serviced, a season that started three weeks late, and then a spring where the lifts simply did not get serviced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDozens of New England ski areas went that way in the space of about fifteen years. Almost none of them got an obituary. What they got was a last printing of souvenirs, sold off cheap at the end, and then nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe patches outlast everything. Not because anybody valued them, but because cloth with thread in it does not rot, does not rust, and does not require anybody to decide to keep it. It simply ends up in a box and waits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56978790940977,"sku":"RV-VT-030","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-ski-patch_e60623be-d448-40f5-849b-01ebcd3ce703.webp?v=1792339670"},{"product_id":"vintage-snow-valley-manchester-vermont-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Snow Valley Snowman Patch, Felt — c. 1950s-60s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Snow Valley ski patch from Manchester, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1950s or early 60s, cut to the outline of its own artwork — no border, no field, just the shape of a snowman standing on a cloud, die-cut from cream felt. He wears a red knit hat and a red scarf, holds a pair of skis upright in one mitten, and Snow Valley runs in red script through the cloud beneath him over MANCHESTER, VERMONT.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFelt puts this early — the fifties or the early sixties, before twill took over and patches started looking machine-made. Felt behaves differently with age. It does not fray so much as soften and go slightly powdery at the edges, and the colors do not crack, they just quietly leave.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSnow Valley closed in 1984. The lifts came down, the trails filled in, and the public face of a ski area that ran for four decades now consists of a cheerful snowman on a piece of wool, standing there with his skis, entirely unaware.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is something about mascots from dead mountains. They were drawn to be reassuring — to tell a nervous eight-year-old in the lift line that this was going to be fine. The mountain is gone and the snowman is still doing his job.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFelt patches are also considerably harder to find in good shape, because felt does not survive a washing machine, and a great many of them went through one on a jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, die-cut to shape with no applied border. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56978813288753,"sku":"RV-VT-021","price":140.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-snow-valley-ski-patch_68787be1-b9ce-4822-8058-a51c1ba10aaf.webp?v=1792339819"},{"product_id":"belknap-s-k-i-racers-and-hare-c-1950s","title":"Belknap S-K-I, Racers and Hare — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Belknap ski patch, estimated to date from the 1950s, featuring three skiers in brown and navy chasing — or being chased by — a white hare roughly the size of a deer. BELKNAP across the top in gold, with an S above and an I below so the name doubles as the K in SKI. Red-bordered shield.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBelknap was the Belknap Mountains Recreation Area in Gilford, built in the mid-1930s with federal relief money and Works Progress Administration labor. In 1937–38 it put a single chairlift on Mt. Rowe, the first chairlift in the East. Every ski area from Vermont to Maine spent the next twenty years catching up. The lift was built with federal money in the Depression, which means the first chair in the East was, in a sense, a public works project.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1962 a double chair went to the summit of Gunstock Mountain, and the whole area took the summit's name. Belknap stopped appearing on patches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSo this is a record of a name that isn't used anymore. Nobody seems to have written down why the hare is there. He's winning.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109894824241,"sku":"RV-NH-140","price":110.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/gunstock-belknap-14.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"belknap-s-k-i-racers-and-hare-worn-c-1950s","title":"Belknap S-K-I, Racers and Hare, Worn — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Belknap ski patch, estimated to date from the 1950s: the same shield as its brighter twin, with BELKNAP crossing SKI, three skiers and one enormous white hare. This one has lived. The sky has faded to the blue of old denim and the border has opened up at the lower right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe name Gunstock was on the mountain long before it was on the patches. The area's first lift, the Gunstock Ski Hoist, was a long rope tow put in for 1934–35, one of the first in New England. Belknap was the name of the park around it until 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody wore this until it frayed. That's not damage. That's a review.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, fraying at lower right. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109894857009,"sku":"RV-NH-141","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/gunstock-belknap-15.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"belknap-area-laconia-ski-jumper-c-1950s","title":"Belknap Area, Laconia, Ski Jumper — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Belknap Area ski patch from Laconia, New Hampshire, estimated to date from the 1950s — the name Gunstock carried before 1962 — featuring a jumper in full flight over two spruces, skis flat and parallel. BELKNAP AREA across a stitched sky, red-bordered shield in green and pale blue. Somebody chose dark green for every line of the drawing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe jumper is the point. The Belknap Mountains Recreation Area opened on February 28, 1937, with an Eastern amateur ski jumping meet. By 1949 its 40-meter hill was hosting a competition in August, and about 8,000 people came to watch men fly off a hill in summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBefore chairlifts were common and snowmaking was a word, this is what a ski area sold: spectacle, a long drive, and a cold seat in the stands. The patch was the souvenir. Jumping was the sport that drew crowds before downhill did.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe area is in Gilford; the patch gives the bigger town next door. The name changed to Gunstock in 1962. This patch didn't.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109894889777,"sku":"RV-NH-142","price":135.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/gunstock-belknap-16.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"brickyard-mountain-laconia-oval-c-1970s","title":"Brickyard Mountain, Laconia, Oval — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Brickyard Mountain ski patch, probably 1970s, featuring an olive arch rising out of a red brick wall with three spruces on top and a small red skier tucked inside it. BRICKYARD MOUNTAIN, LACONIA H. in olive below. A woven oval in red; the olive and red is a strange pairing that works.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrickyard began in the 1960s as a lighted rope tow behind the Shangri-La Resort Motel at Weirs Beach, on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. In 1970 the motel was sold and renamed the Brickyard Mountain Inn, and the hill took the name too.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor the 1976–77 season it got a double chair, 1,357 feet long, serving 392 feet of vertical. A weekend lift ticket was six dollars. Night skiing under lights, snowmaking, a ski school and rentals, all at the end of a motel parking lot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt closed sometime in the early 1980s. A housing development went in on the site in the 2000s, and little of the ski area is left. The brick wall on the patch has outlasted it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895414065,"sku":"RV-NH-158","price":110.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/brickyard-mountain-01.jpg?v=1792925849"},{"product_id":"brickyard-mountain-arch-c-1970s","title":"Brickyard Mountain, Arch — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Brickyard Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring three green spruces on a green arch rising out of orange-red bricks, with “brickyard mountain” in round lowercase green underneath. Arched top, blue merrowed edge. The stitched sky is dense enough to feel like terry cloth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrickyard was a small hill that thought big. In 1976 it bought snowmaking pumps and lights at auction from Dutchess, a ski area that had closed in New York. Pico, over in Vermont, won the chairlifts. Ski areas have always lived on each other's parts. Terry Tyler, who had founded Maple Valley in Vermont, ran the place in its first years as a ski area.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe next season it raised tickets from six dollars to ten and capped sales at 500 people a day. A second chairlift was proposed. Nobody has found proof it was ever built.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYou learned to ski here if your parents happened to pick the right motel on Lake Winnipesaukee. Not a bad way to start.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895446833,"sku":"RV-NH-159","price":110.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/brickyard-mountain-02.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"brookline-ski-area-triangle-c-1960s","title":"Brookline Ski Area, Triangle — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Brookline Ski Area patch, estimated to date from the 1960s, built around a white tipi with a blue B and a line of stick figures on single skis drawn in feathered headdresses. A woven triangle, blue field, red and gold border, BROOKLINE SKI AREA H. in gold along the bottom. Listed as a record of what the area put on its merchandise, not as an endorsement of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe figures are a caricature of Native dress, common on mid-century souvenirs and not something anyone would draw now. We're listing it as the record it is.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrookline skied on Potanipo Hill, just over the Massachusetts line, from the winter of 1935–36, when a gas-powered rope tow made it one of the first lift-served ski areas in New England. It added a T-bar in 1962, became Big Bear in 1973 and Musket Mountain in 1982, and closed after the 1983–84 season. Vertical was about 600 feet, plenty for a weekend out of Nashua or Lowell.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSince 1996 the old slopes have held the Andres Institute of Art. Dozens of sculptures stand where the trails were. Art on the old fall line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895479601,"sku":"RV-NH-160","price":120.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/brookline-ski-area-01.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"brookline-ski-area-brookline-n-h-c-1960s","title":"Brookline Ski Area, Brookline N.H. — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Brookline Ski Area patch, estimated to date from the 1960s, featuring a skier in a red sweater and yellow vest caught in a full-tilt turn, with two spruces standing guard over a blue-and-white mountain. BROOKLINE, H. arched across the top, SKI AREA in gold below. A wide navy shield with a gold border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrookline sold lift tickets for almost half a century. In 1962 Arthur DeRosa added a T-bar and eight new trails, and business went up about forty percent. A second T-bar was planned. It never came. The vertical was about 600 feet, enough to teach a town to ski.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1976 the snowmaking system burned, and the area fell behind on its property taxes through the rest of the decade. Two new names and several owners later, it closed for good after the 1983–84 season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe skier here is going faster than 600 feet of vertical ever let anyone go. That's what patches were for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, fraying at right. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895512369,"sku":"RV-NH-161","price":125.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/brookline-ski-area-02.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"crotched-mountain-cm-monogram-c-1980s","title":"Crotched Mountain, CM Monogram — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, featuring a big CM monogram — the C rounded, the M two hard peaks — over CROTCHED MOUNTAIN in slab serif. A square of white twill with a navy border. Navy on white and nothing else, which in the 1980s took restraint.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a logo from the ambitious years. Through the 1980s Crotched ran both faces of the mountain, east and west, and from 1980–81 it marketed the result as the largest ski area in southern New Hampshire. Two base lodges, two sets of lifts, one name on the jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThen the bill came. In October 1989 the company filed for Chapter 11 with $13.9 million in debt against $7.5 million in assets. Local investors ran it one more season. Both sides closed in 1990. The debt was nearly double what the place was worth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe monogram looks built to last. It was right about the letters, anyway. The name came back in 2003, on the other side of the mountain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895872817,"sku":"RV-NH-172","price":80.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-01.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"crotched-mountain-red-and-blue-roundel-c-1970s","title":"Crotched Mountain, Red and Blue Roundel — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain ski patch, probably 1970s, with a pair of white skis crossed in a V at the top of a field split red, blue and white. “crotched” in fat red lowercase over MOUNTAIN in blue. Round, blue merrowed edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAround the mountain, on the west side, a separate ski area called Onset opened on December 14, 1969. Its trails were named for racehorses. It went to foreclosure, became Bobcat in 1977, and in 1979 was bought by the people who ran Crotched and renamed Crotched West.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe ski area running today is that west side, reopened in 2003. The Crotched on this patch is the other one. Same name, different face of the mountain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895905585,"sku":"RV-NH-173","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-02.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"ski-crotched-red-wave-embroidered-c-1960s","title":"Ski Crotched, Red Wave, Embroidered — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1960s, featuring a red wave that is half ski slope and half pennant, wrapping around itself. SKI stitched in white down the curl, CROTCHED in white block letters along the base. A navy oval with a cream merrowed edge; the red is dense and raised, the white letters sitting on top of it like paint.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLift-served skiing on Crotched Mountain began in the winter of 1963–64, on the northeastern shoulder of a 2,066-foot mountain in southern New Hampshire. Close enough to Boston for a day trip, high enough to be worth the drive. That was the business plan for a lot of hills in the state.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis side, Crotched East, ran until 1990. Its trails and lifts haven't been used since. The ski area that opened in 2003 under the same name is around the other side.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSo this is a patch from a ski area that is still open and also isn't. New Hampshire has a few of those.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895938353,"sku":"RV-NH-174","price":95.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-03.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"ski-crotched-blue-wave-woven-c-1960s","title":"Ski Crotched, Blue Wave, Woven — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1960s: the same SKI CROTCHED wave as the embroidered version, woven this time in two blues on cream inside a round light-blue border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis one has been through it. The cream carries heavy brown staining, the border has gone fuzzy, and the blues have faded toward gray. It looks like it rode on a hat for several winters and then sat in a damp garage for several more.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt costs less than its cleaner sibling. It has also skied more. The mark is from the Crotched East years, the side of the mountain where the lifts stopped in 1990.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven, merrowed edge, heavy staining. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109895971121,"sku":"RV-NH-175","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-04.jpg?v=1792925845"},{"product_id":"crotched-mountain-ski-area-signboard-c-1970s","title":"Crotched Mountain Ski Area, Signboard — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain Ski Area patch, probably 1970s, built around a cream signboard notched at the top — the sign at the end of the access road, stitched in miniature. “Crotched Mountain Ski Area” in red inside it, on a red field cut as a stretched octagon with a cream border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"Ski Area\" is doing honest work there. Not a resort, not a mountain experience. It had lifts, trails and a lodge, and it said so.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSkier visits peaked in 1987–88, at about 117,000. Two winters later the company was in bankruptcy. The sign on the patch never mentions any of that. Signs don't.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896003889,"sku":"RV-NH-176","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-05.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"crotched-mountain-orange-triangle-c-1980s","title":"Crotched Mountain, Orange Triangle — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Crotched Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, featuring a solid orange-red peak above a band of heavy stencil type, with the red t in Crotched running straight up into the summit like a lift line. A black-bordered triangle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat trick with the t is the best piece of design in the Crotched set. Somebody sat with this one a while.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2003 Peak Resorts spent a reported $10 million rebuilding the old west side and reopened it as Crotched Mountain on December 20. Vail bought Peak in 2019. The east side, the one this patch was made for, stayed closed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896036657,"sku":"RV-NH-177","price":80.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/crotched-mountain-06.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"the-highlands-northfield-gray-c-1970s","title":"The Highlands, Northfield, Gray — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage ski patch from The Highlands, Northfield, New Hampshire, probably 1970s, featuring a gold loop of thread hanging over the summit that looks like either a lasso or a halo. Two white embroidered peaks with a dark lift line between them, a blue trail snaking down to NORTHFIELD, , tall gold script. Round, cream merrowed edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Highlands opened in late December 1968 on the north face of Bean Hill, southeast of Tilton, with two T-bars, two rope tows, night skiing and six miles of trail. The Elliott family built it and ran it, and they were early in aerial skiing, which is a strange résumé for a family hill.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere was no snowmaking for years. In 1979–80 it reportedly didn't run at all. The power was cut in 1993. The last season was 1994–95.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eToday it's Highland Mountain Bike Park. The triple chair carries bikes now, and the trails have jumps on them. The family hill found a second life on two wheels.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896069425,"sku":"RV-NH-178","price":110.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/the-highlands-01.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"the-highlands-northfield-sealed-in-original-package-c-1970s","title":"The Highlands, Northfield, Sealed in Original Package — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage ski patch from The Highlands in Northfield, New Hampshire, estimated to date from the 1970s and still in the bag: two peaks and a blue trail in teal and pale gray-blue, gold script, NORTHFIELD, H. around the rim. Sealed in cellophane under its original black header card from a maker on West 40th Street.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody in a garment-district office took an order from a small ski hill in Northfield, New Hampshire. The patches came north in a box. Most were sold, sewn on, washed and eventually thrown out. This one wasn't. The cellophane is clear, the header card is intact, and the hole at the top is where it hung on a peg behind a counter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Highlands closed after the 1994–95 season. The hill is a bike park now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSo this is the closest thing left to the counter at the base lodge: the patch exactly as it hung there, waiting for somebody who'd had a good day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven, merrowed edge, unopened retail package. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896102193,"sku":"RV-NH-179","price":185.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/the-highlands-02.jpg?v=1792925851"},{"product_id":"king-ridge-crown-and-peaks-c-1970s","title":"King Ridge, Crown and Peaks — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage King Ridge ski patch, estimated to date from the 1970s, with a gold crown floating over two red peaks drawn in a single unbroken line and a red skier silhouette dropping straight through the G. Round, gold merrowed edge, KING RIDGE in red across the middle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKing Ridge opened on December 23, 1961, in New London, spun off from the New London Outing Club when the project got too big for a club to carry. The club had been running a rope tow on its Northeast Slope since 1947. In 1961 it found 400 acres in Sutton and needed a company to build on them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt was built upside down. The lodge and the parking sat at the summit, so you started the day by skiing down and ended it by riding up to your car. About 775 feet of vertical, all of it below the parking lot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat's a lovely idea until the last chair of a cold afternoon, keys in your pocket, car at the top of the hill.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe area closed after the 1994–95 season. The summit where the lodge stood became house lots.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896200497,"sku":"RV-NH-182","price":110.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/king-ridge-01.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"king-ridge-racer-in-the-crown-red-border-c-1970s","title":"King Ridge, Racer in the Crown, Red Border — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage King Ridge ski patch, probably 1970s, featuring a racer in a black sweater and KR bib coming straight at you, poles planted, a metallic gold crown floating behind his head like a halo. KING RIDGE in black across a blue sky, woven shield, red border. His face is drawn with one small red mouth, which is more expression than most patches attempt.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKing Ridge named its trails out of Alice in Wonderland. The general manager, Bill Bardsley, picked them, and for decades kids in New London learned to ski on runs borrowed from Lewis Carroll.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt the end of the 1973–74 season Bardsley shaved off his beard for snow luck. It made the national papers. Nobody wrote down whether it worked. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe gold thread in the crown is metallic and still catches the light. The racer looks like he takes all of this very seriously. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven with metallic thread, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896233265,"sku":"RV-NH-183","price":100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/king-ridge-02.jpg?v=1792925848"},{"product_id":"king-ridge-black-roundel-c-1960s","title":"King Ridge, Black Roundel — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage King Ridge ski patch, estimated to date from the 1960s, featuring a red skier sweeping across the base of a yellow crown in one long arc. KING RIDGE arched in yellow over a round black field. The yellow thread is thick enough to stand up off the cloth, and the skier is moving fast enough to leave a wake.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1972 King Ridge installed the first triple chairlift in New Hampshire. Three to a chair meant a small hill off I-89 could move a weekend crowd, and King Ridge had one. By about 1970 it was taking weekend reservations because too many people were showing up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSnow was the problem. There was no snowmaking until an experimental system in 1981–82, and a run of thin winters piled up the debt. Ski areas without snowmaking were betting on the sky, and the sky didn't always pay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis patch is from before any of that, when the only thing anyone had to worry about was the line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge.Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896266033,"sku":"RV-NH-184","price":120.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/king-ridge-03.jpg?v=1792925849"},{"product_id":"king-ridge-racer-in-the-crown-black-border-c-1970s","title":"King Ridge, Racer in the Crown, Black Border — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage King Ridge ski patch from the 1970s, the black-bordered twin of the red-bordered racer: same blue sky, same metallic gold crown, same KR bib and planted poles, framed in black instead. The crown’s metallic thread still catches the light.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the winter of 1967–68 George Romney, then governor of Michigan, skied King Ridge while campaigning in the New Hampshire primary. A presidential candidate at a hill this size tells you how much of New Hampshire politics happens in winter. The primary was in March. Some of the campaigning happened on ski hills.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRomney didn't win. The racer on the patch is still leaning into the fall line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWoven with metallic thread, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896298801,"sku":"RV-NH-185","price":100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/king-ridge-04.jpg?v=1792925850"},{"product_id":"king-ridge-mountain-outline-c-1980s","title":"King Ridge, Mountain Outline — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage King Ridge ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, with two peaks drawn in a thin blue line and a green trail stitched down the face. King Ridge in bold blue italics, a tiny crown perched on the i. A white rectangle with a royal blue edge, neat and legible, built for a brochure and a trail map.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is late King Ridge: clean, a little corporate, the crown shrunk to an afterthought. Snowmaking had finally arrived, and in 1986 a new triple replaced the old Eastside T-bar. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt didn't save it. The banks foreclosed after the 1992–93 season, and in June 1995 the area sold at auction for $785,000. The lifts went elsewhere, one triple to Ragged Mountain and one to King Pine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe developer deeded 441 acres to the town of Sutton. It's the King Hill Reservation now, open for hiking and backcountry skiing. People still ski it. They just have to climb first.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57109896331569,"sku":"RV-NH-186","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/king-ridge-05.jpg?v=1792925851"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/collections\/lost-collection.png?v=1792353577","url":"https:\/\/ropetowvintage.com\/collections\/lost-mountains.oembed","provider":"Ropetow Vintage","version":"1.0","type":"link"}