Stowe Vermont Four-Season Patch — c. 1970s

A vintage Stowe, Vermont patch, estimated to date from the 1970s, a blue rectangle with a cream merrowed border carrying Stowe in white script over VERMONT in white block — and, stacked at the right, a tennis racket, the head of a golf club and a snowflake.

This is the precise moment a ski town stopped being a ski town. Somebody in an office worked out that the lifts sat idle eight months of the year, that the inns had beds going empty in July, and that the correct word for what they were running was not a ski area but a resort.

Then they put the proof on a patch and sold it at the same counter as the ski ones. You can date the entire shift from this object.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with soiling to the border. Photos are the condition report.