Sugarloaf Mountain Ski Patch (Kingfield) — c. 1970s

A vintage Sugarloaf Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1970s, cut as a fan — flat across the top, curving to a point below — with a gold merrowed border. A skier in red carves across a white summit under a pale blue sky, SUGARLOAF MOUNTAIN arched in red above him and KINGFIELD, MAINE in red beneath.

The patch says Kingfield, which is the town next door rather than the one the lifts are in. That is not an error — for years Kingfield was the address, the post office and the place you stopped for gas, and Carrabassett Valley barely existed as a town. A patch that names the wrong town is usually a patch old enough to name the right one.

Sugarloaf held the first World Cup races ever run in the East, in 1971, which for a mountain in western Maine took a genuinely surprising amount of nerve. The circuit came to Carrabassett Valley, which at that point had barely enough beds to house it.

They pulled it off. The patch has gold thread in it, which was not an accident that year.

Gold thread cost extra and was used for a reason. Somebody wanted this patch to look like an occasion, and that year it was one.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.