Ski Dutch Mt. Patch, Sealed — c. 1960s-70s

A vintage Ski Dutch Mt. patch from Heartwellville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round patch with a gold merrowed border, a skier in a yellow jacket dropping past a bare blue tree, and SKI DUTCH MT. over HEARTWELLVILLE VT. in navy block caps.

Southern Vermont, and almost certainly Dutch Hill at Heartwellville going by a shorter name — mountains shortened themselves on merchandise all the time, because the mill charged by the stitch and nobody was being precise about it.

Dutch Hill sold patches reading both Dutch Mt. and Dutch Hill, from the same maker, with the same artwork, in the same bag. Nobody has ever explained why. Collectors who care about the place want the pair, and the pair is harder to assemble than it sounds.

Dutch Hill ran from the mid-1940s until 1985. Then the lifts came down and the Green Mountain National Forest quietly took the hill back, which is a gentler end than most of them got.

Go up Route 8 today and you can still find it. The old lift line is the place where the second-growth is a different age than everything around it, and the grade goes strange in a way that no natural hillside does. Volunteers cut glades in there now with hand tools. It is skiing again, after a fashion, without a lift or a ticket or a name.

Walk it in October and the beginner slope is unmistakable. It is the only flat open ground on that whole hillside, and it is slowly filling in from the edges.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.