As you sit and look out at the beautiful sunsets over lake Winnebago, one can't help but notice the three sheds at the top of the hill and the various poles with car wheels attached. A few, heading down through the woods. What was it all about? The following information Tells the story of:,
That which once was: The Calumet County Park Ski Hill.
Area resident John Stumpf, president of the county’s park commission after WWII, and a few other drove the creation of a proper ski slope at the location and Calumet County partnered with the Fox Valley Ski Club to make it a reality. The Club asked for some financial assistance notably to install a tow so club members and kids no longer had to sidestep up the hill. By 1950, they had their tow, powered by an engine from a Model A. In the early 1950s, up to 100 Jamaican migrant workers helped clear more of the slopes after their work was done each day on a local farm. Originally, it was three slopes - one expert, on intermediate and one novice - with two tows and a warming hut. By the end of its run, Calumet had five total runs with five tows with a couple of the runs beginner’s slopes.
The Club got a second tow around 1957. In 1962, it was ready for a third tow, with equipment given to it by the Fond du Lac Ski Club, presumably from the old Touchett Ski Hill, which is profiled on this site down below on the main page. By this point, Calumet bragged about having the lowest lift tickets in the state: $1 a day for adults and 50 cents for kids. The county also broke ground on a proper chalet in 1966. The county set the budget for the chalet at $12,000. It had three picture windows and two circular fireplaces.
Insurance, the need for snowmaking and the challenge of carving out a niche affected Calumet like so many other ski hills by the late 1970s and 1980s. Rising insurance costs came to a head in late 1986. Liability insurance was about to run out in January, 1987. Calumet County ended being one of the few counties to be granted insurance for a ski area at that time. The county started looking out of state for more reasonable rates. The board also wanted to explore the possibility of having a private entity operate the ski hill and ski rentals at Calumet to lessen liabilities, but ultimately decided against it. Interestingly, one of Calumet’s park supervisors from the 1970s was the first in the state to request that ski hills be exempt from state liability insurance requirements. Back in the late 1970s, the park’s liability premium jumped from about $600 one year to about $2500 the next season. Ouch.
Calumet began adding snowmaking capability in 1982, and finished it for the 1983/1984 season after a $25,000 gift from a Brillion couple. The county had to add over $5000 for additional equipment. If you look at my photos below, you will see what I believe to be some pipe running from under the road up to the slopes. I assume this carried in water from the lake. The hill tended to lose a lot of snowpack, so this was essential.
Calumet had lights by 1950, but at some point, those lights were removed. There was a proposal to install lights again in 1976, but it appears that never came to fruition. A Milwaukee donated 21 lights and a power company donated poles in 1986 to the area but it would require at least $12,000 to install them. Headaches. The county board finally sprung for the lights. $250 a pop to blast the holes for the light poles.The county board accepted a master plan in 1987 that called for lights at the ski hill by 1989 or 1990.
The issue of keeping Calumet came up again 1989. While the park commission and county board seemed okay with operating at a wash or a certain degree of a loss, operating at tens of thousands of dollars in losses each season seemed unacceptable to some. The previous season, Calumet opened only 17 days and drew only 1300 skiers and generated a grand total of about $5000 for the season. That's rough given the minimum costs of operating snowmaking equipment and paying people to operate the lifts and chalet. They even had to rent a compressor to do the job. All told, it was a loss of $10,000 for the season. The Parks Commission committed to improvements to the hill in 1989, but wanted to start with lights, to see how many skiers it attracted, before committing to new snowmaking equipment, which all total could have run up to $300,000.
Still, things looked up in terms of revenue by the mid-1980s/early 1990s. Over 4000 skiers bought lift tickets in the 1985/1986 season. In 1990, the are opened the ski hill for 27 days and did over $15,000 in revenue from the hill. In 1991, for example, the area had 45 days open to the public and generated more than $20,000 in revenue from about 3000 skiers spread across day and night sessions. That was a $5000 increase in revenue from the previous season. To provide some larger context for quantities of visitors, in the early 1960s, 70,000 to 80,000 visited the park over the course of an entire year.
Unfortunately, those numbers could not offset the costs of the area nor justify spending hundreds of thousands on new snowmaking and grooming equipment by the mid-1990s. The writing was on the proverbial wall. Calumet finally closed in 1996, after extended arguments by the county park board over proposed capital improvements to the ski hill resulted in the decision. It made the transition into strictly a tubing hill for the 1996/1997 season, using a portion of one of the old ski slopes and one of the beginner’s slopes, operating a tow for the tubers. It still operates today, along with the cross-country trails that have been a feature of the park for many years. (Info credit to the "Lost WI Ski Hill Page")
So there it is. Now you know.
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