{"product_id":"vintage-smugglers-notch-ski-ways-embroidered-patch","title":"Smugglers’ Notch Ski Ways Patch, Felt — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Smugglers' Notch Ski Ways patch from Jeffersonville, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1950s, featuring a skier in a yellow jacket and red cap carving down a white trail under a blue sky. Pointed shield on felt with a red chain-stitched edge, SMUGGLERS' NOTCH in yellow across the top, Ski Ways in red script through the middle, JEFFERSONVILLE, V.T. along the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSki Ways is the tell. That phrasing, the chain stitch and the felt ground all point the same direction, and it is the same vocabulary you find on the earliest patches anywhere in New England — the years when a ski area was a cleared slope, a rope, and a hand-painted sign at the road.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSki Ways. That name did not last, and it puts this patch early — back when nobody had settled on what to call the thing they were building. Ski way, ski bowl, ski slope, ski area, ski resort. The vocabulary of the whole sport was still being worked out in real time by people who were mostly making it up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUp there the road itself closes every winter. Snow fills the notch, the state stops plowing, and the boulders that give the pass its reputation sit buried until April. For five months of the year the mountain is at the end of a dead end, which has shaped every single thing about the kind of place it became.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA patch that says Ski Ways is a patch from before any of that was decided.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEverything about the design says uncertainty — the shape, the lettering, the fact that nobody had worked out yet whether a ski area's patch should show the skiing or the mountain or just the name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, hand-worked edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55920366256433,"sku":"RV-VT-071","price":105.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-smugglers-notch-ski-patch.webp?v=1787703125","url":"https:\/\/ropetowvintage.com\/products\/vintage-smugglers-notch-ski-ways-embroidered-patch","provider":"Ropetow Vintage","version":"1.0","type":"link"}