This past weekend Long Island got a dusting of snow. Thanks to the effects of global warming, heavy snowfalls have become pretty rare. But in the past, winter in the New York Metro area meant snow—and lots of it.
How many people know that back then Long Island was a winter wonderland, and more surprisingly, a ski area?
In the local paper, Smithtown Matters, “George Arns remembers that in the 1930’s, snow “came early and stayed all winter long. We always had snow in October, and by Thanksgiving, we would have two to three feet of snow on the ground. Real hard storms and blizzards would hit and dump lots of snow. There was a storm in 1934 and another in 1936. I believe the storm in 1936 dumped four feet of snow in Smithtown.”
Charlie Richardson remembers sleigh-riding down the long hill toward the statue of the Bull that now stands as the symbol of Smithtown. “They used to sand the south side of the road, but you could sleigh-ride all the way downhill on the north side.”
The island’s first ski slope, Oyster Bay Ski Area in Mill Neck, closed in the late 1950s, the land being sold for housing. However, there were others. The Island at various times from the end of World War II until 1980 was home to commercial or municipal ski areas in Mill Neck, Old Bethpage, Huntington Station, Smithtown and Farmingville. Rope tows and at least one T-bar lift served the small operations made possible by Ice Age glaciers that deposited hills geologists call a terminal moraine.
With the passage of time, recollections have faded and records are sketchy, but according to the best information available, Long Island’s first ski area was either the Oyster Bay Ski Area that operated in Mill Neck from the late 1940s through the winter of 1957-1958, or Bethpage State Park.
The park offered a single rope tow on what is now the 18th hole of the Green Course from 1948 until the early 1970s, according to George Gorman Jr., deputy regional state parks director. It was billed as having the first ski tow on Long Island, serving a 400-foot slope with 100-foot vertical drop.
“We had snow-making machines” at some point, Gorman said. The building that housed them and the machinery inside are still there.”
In 1958, the Hi-Point Ski Club was created on Dix Hills Road in Huntington Station. Newsday’s ski columnist at the time, Bill Voorhees, referred to it as “the island’s first real ski area, serviced by machine-made snow.”
The club was the inspiration of Republic Aviation design engineer Carl Josephson, who sold $100 memberships and in seven weeks raised $23,000. The members built the area, which opened in December 1959.
These places are all gone now—and their demise coincided not only with climate change that made snowfalls less frequent, but with the scourge of housing developments. Most of these properties were sold off to builders, converting leisure areas into tract houses and subdivisions. But for those who were lucky enough to live in that era, they are still great memories.
