Ski Shawnee Patch (Rainbow Bands) — c. 1970s

A vintage Ski Shawnee patch from Bridgton, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, round with a red merrowed border on a white ground. A blue mountain range runs across the middle, SKI SHAWNEE in blue block caps beneath it, and five bands of color — red, orange, yellow, green, blue — run along the foot. At the center of the range sits the mountain's mark of that era: a head in profile, in red and white, with two feathers behind it.

The hill carried the Shawnee name and this mark for roughly three decades before reverting to Pleasant Mountain in 2021, and it's here because taking it out of the record doesn't take it out of the history.

Five horizontal stripes under a logo was the single most common graphic decision in American skiing between about 1973 and 1980 — it turns up on lift tickets, trail maps, rental skis and the side of ski-school bibs from Vermont to Colorado, and then it vanishes almost overnight.

Bridgton sits in the lakes country of western Maine, an hour from Portland, and the hill above Moose Pond has been the town's winter economy for the better part of a century under three different names.

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