Rangeley Saddleback Mountain Patch (Oval) — c. 1980s

A vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, reduced to two overlapping peaks — one blue, one red — sitting in the middle of a white oval with a gold merrowed border. RANGELEY arched in black across the top, SADDLEBACK in black beneath. The dip between the two peaks is the saddle, and that is the entire logo.

Rangeley is a town of about twelve hundred people with a lake, a main street, a couple of restaurants and a ski mountain. The patch is roughly the same ratio — a bit of landscape, a bit of color, nothing surplus to requirements.

Towns that size do not support ski areas anymore. A few of them did for fifty years anyway.

Small-town ski areas and the towns around them are the same organism. When one of them stops, the other finds out immediately, in the hardware store and the diner and the school enrollment numbers.

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