Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol Patch (America’s Oldest) — later production

A Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol patch from Stowe, Vermont, round on white twill inside a blue merrowed border: MT. MANSFIELD arched in blue across the top, SKI PATROL around the bottom, a red cross filling the center with EST. 1934 in white across its arms, and — curved inside the ring in red — AMERICA'S OLDEST SKI PATROL.

The claim stitched into it is true. Charley Lord and a handful of others organized the Mt. Mansfield patrol in 1934, before the National Ski Patrol existed, which makes this the lettering of the oldest continuously operating ski patrol in the country — printed on the patch, in red, with no hedging. The date on it refers to the patrol, not to this particular piece of cloth.

Patrol patches were issued, not bought. You got one by passing the tests, and then by going out in the weather that had cleared the mountain of everybody with any sense — bringing a toboggan down Nose Dive with somebody's broken leg in it, in flat light, with the wind coming across the ridge and your own hands long past the point of being useful. When you hung it up after your last season, you were expected to hand the thing back in.

The Mt. Mansfield patrol is one of the oldest in the country. Nearly everything the sport knows about getting hurt people off a mountain, somebody worked out the hard way on terrain like this, usually in failing light, usually improvising with what was in the shed.

There is no version of this that crossed a counter. Somebody earned it, wore it on the left chest of a wool shirt for a decade, and then did not hand it back.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Crisp, unworn construction: this is a later-production patrol patch, not a 1930s one. Photos are the condition report.