At Long Island's Bald Hill ski slope, it cost just $1 to ski all day
Gazing out over Long Island’s flatlands, it’s hard to imagine this once was a place of schussing and slaloming. But back in the day, a handful of ski areas made mountains out of mole hills — none of them, perhaps, as beloved as Farmingville’s Bald Hill Ski Bowl.
"It was a special place. It really was," says video producer Craig Cooper, 72, of Smithtown, who worked there in the mid-1970s. "These other places that were around on the Island, I don't remember anybody saying, ‘Hey, we're going to Hi-Point!’ or ‘Let’s go to the Oyster Bay Ski Center!’ Bald Hill was different. It was big, it was cheap, it was just an easy place to get to."
Lisa Godbolt, of Patchogue, skis at Bald Hill Ski Bowl in Farmingville in 1975. Credit: Newsday/Mitch Turner
"It was great," agrees Ralph DeCarli, 68, formerly of Commack and now, with his wife, Arizona-based and nomadic in a motorhome. He began skiing there as a child with his European-immigrant parents. "We went there virtually every weekend when there was snow available" — either natural or from Bald Hill’s snowmaking equipment.
One draw for many, including DeCarli’s blue-collar parents, was that "the price was right." Tickets for all-day skiing until 10:30 p.m. cost just $1 and $2 for juniors and adults, respectively, if they were Brookhaven residents, and $2 to $3 ($4 on weekends) for nonresidents. Those prices went up only 25 cents by the time Bald Hill closed in 1980. Parking cost $3 by then.
Run by the Town of Brookhaven and now the site of Catholic Health Amphitheater at Bald Hill — at, appropriately, 1 Ski Run Lane — the Bald Hill Ski Bowl opened in January 1965. Per a Newsday report at the time, it was "half again as large as any other ski slope on the Island."
Skiers wait for the tow rope at Bald Hill Ski Bowl in 1975. Credit: Newsday/Mitch Turner
Those other slopes included the Oyster Bay Ski Center, open from 1949 (with a provisional launch the year before) to about 1957; the private Hi-Point Ski Club in Huntington Station, which opened in December 1958, and lasted about 25 years; and Smithtown’s private Merrywood Country Club, which opened in 1960 and added a ski area in 1962 before eventually becoming today’s Smithtown Landing Country Club, sans skiing.
Bald Hill had two tow ropes and 44 T-bar lifts to take patrons — as many as 5,000 a week — up a 400-foot-high hill of five ski trails across three slopes. To one side was a sledding area, free to all. "I saw a lot of kids that either didn't want to ski, didn't know how or didn't have the funds to go skiing," says DeCarli, a retired architect and aviation entrepreneur. There also was an ice-skating rink.
And, of course, a ski lodge. An A-frame chalet, it had a large, round freestanding brick fireplace, snack bar, alcohol bar, first-aid center and ski-rental shop. It still stands, as a greenroom support area for the amphitheater.
Craig Cooper, who worked there during winter breaks from college in New Jersey, recalls: "I don't know if there was a help-wanted sign but I just walked up and said, ‘Hey, I have skis. I know what I'm doing to adjust them. Do you need any help?’"
His time there led to a monthlong romance, he remembers wistfully. "I was fitting this young lady in the rental shop, and I was quite smitten," he recalls. "So I was out on the slope on one of my breaks and I saw her fall down. One ski had come off. And I recall lying down on the snow next to her to help her put her ski back on." It was, he says, "right out of a Hallmark movie."
The ski center — which during the off season held concerts and auto shows — had never been a moneymaker but more of a public amenity. According to Brookhaven officials in 1980 planning the next year’s town budget, Bald Hill had most recently cost $129,650 annually to run — and because of mild weather had taken in only $18,000 in revenue for 1979-80, compared with $23,280 the previous season.
In November 1980, after unsuccessfully seeking a concessionaire to lease and run the facility, Brookhaven passed a budget closing Bald Hill. Sleigh rides and ice skating continued for a time. But the glory days of Long Island skiing were over, living on only in memory.
"They had speakers on each lift pole going up that main hill," recalls DeCarli, for whom two songs stick out in his mind: Simon and Garfunkel’s "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)" and the Beatles’ "Here Comes the Sun." Even today, he says, "Every time they come on the radio, I think of Bald Hill."
