Brickyard Mountain, Arch — c. 1970s

A 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.

Brickyard 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.

The 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.

You learned to ski here if your parents happened to pick the right motel on Lake Winnipesaukee. Not a bad way to start.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.