Sugarloaf Mt. Ski Club Patch, Felt — c. 1950s

A vintage Sugarloaf Mt. Ski Club patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1950s, cut from a round of cream felt with no applied border — a red ring carrying SUGARLOAF MT. across the top and SKI CLUB around the foot, and inside it a red figure skiing down a slope of red and cream stripes with a red snowflake beside him. Soiled and soft with age.

The club came before the resort. Around 1950 Amos Winter and a handful of men from Kingfield walked up Sugarloaf and started cutting the first trail by hand, because they wanted somewhere to ski and there was not anywhere. They were known locally as the Bigelow Boys and they were doing this on weekends, with saws, for no money.

Everything that exists on that mountain now — the lifts, the hotel, the World Cup history, the whole economy of Carrabassett Valley — descends directly from a few people deciding to clear trees on their own time.

A club patch from the organization that did the cutting is not a souvenir of the resort. It is a souvenir of the thing that had to happen first, and there are far fewer of them.

Winter ran the operation for decades afterward and the mountain is effectively his, though the corporate ownership has changed hands several times since. Very few ski areas in America can point at one person and say it began with him.

Embroidered on felt, cut edge, no applied border, with soiling throughout. Photos are the condition report.