Pine Haven Ski Area Patch (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s

A 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.

Pine 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.

There 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.

No 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.

Rope tows were powered by whatever was available — a truck engine, a tractor, in at least one documented case a washing machine motor.

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