Smugglers’ Notch Ski Club Patch, Felt — c. 1950s-60s

A vintage Smugglers' Notch Ski Club patch from Jeffersonville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1950s or early 60s, worked on a round of cream felt with a red ring chain-stitched around the edge. SMUGGLERS' NOTCH arched in blue across the top, JEFFERSONVILLE, VT. around the bottom, Ski Club in blue script through the middle, and a small skier in a red cap and yellow jacket riding one ski across the words.

Club patches came off a membership roll, not a cash register. Somebody paid dues, showed up on Saturdays, worked a race or ran a lift or sold raffle tickets for the chair fund, and got this at the end of it.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Resort patches tell you a mountain existed and sold souvenirs. Club patches tell you who was actually there every single weekend in the cold, making the place work — the people who ran the gates, drove the vans, taught the kids, and kept a small Vermont ski area alive through the decades when small Vermont ski areas were dying at a rate of several a year.

Nobody wrote their names down. This is roughly the extent of the record.

A ski area needs about two hundred people who care more than is reasonable. The club is where you found them, and a patch like this is how you know their names existed even when the records do not. Nobody has a list. There is only the object and the inference.

Chain-stitched on felt, hand-worked edge, with loose threads at the border. Photos are the condition report.