Across the county, a bygone heritage of skiing

If you live in Jefferson County and want to ski somewhere with ski lifts, you’ll have to drive for a while: Great Divide Ski Area, between Helena and Lincoln, is about 40 minutes from Montana City and slightly more than an hour from Boulder; Discovery Ski Area west of Anaconda is about 90 minutes from Whitehall and nearly two hours from Boulder—Bridger Bowl is just as far, and Big Sky even farther.

But travel back in time 90 years and you wouldn’t have to leave the county—or even the Boulder area—to be towed by a lift to the top of a ski run and cruise back down to the bottom on natural snow. In the early and mid-20th century, multiple rope tows at small ski areas in Jefferson County ferried skiers to the tops of runs that long ago were abandoned and subsequently disappeared from the landscape, erased by natural and human intervention, surviving only in the memories of the few remaining people who made turns there.

Boulder Hill