New England ski resort
AA-2026-CE0374
On the image
Someone at this ski lodge did the maths on a mountain that only earned money four months a year and decided gravity itself could be monetised twice. The result is a slatted wooden track running straight down the meadow behind the lodge, fitted with little coloured carts that require no snow, no lift ticket infrastructure, and no skill whatsoever beyond sitting down and letting go.
The log building at the base, built for apres-ski coffee and boot-drying in January, spends its summer as the ticket booth for an activity that mostly consists of screaming for eleven seconds. It was the kind of idea a 1960s resort operator was proud of: a slope that used to sit idle all summer was now generating revenue from tourists willing to pay for the sensation of falling downhill in a painted metal tray.
No one in the frame is riding it, which is the most honest moment a promotional slide of this kind ever produces. The empty carts wait in a neat descending row, patient as a chairlift, for a family that has not yet decided the thing looks safer than it is.
The historian's note
The photograph documents a summer gravity ride, sometimes called an alpine slide or toboggan chute, installed on a ski slope to generate off-season income. These attractions became common at North American ski resorts beginning in the 1960s, when operators sought ways to use terrain and lift infrastructure year-round rather than leaving it dormant outside winter.
The wooden track and small wheeled or sled-like carts running on rails down open grass are consistent with early gravity-slide designs, precursors to the fibreglass alpine slides that became widespread at resorts in the following decade. The log lodge at the base is typical of mid-century ski-area architecture, built for winter use and adapted for summer visitors during the shoulder season.
Such rides represent an early instance of ski resorts diversifying into four-season tourism, a business shift that reshaped the economics of mountain resort towns across New England and the northeastern United States in the second half of the twentieth century.
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Summer Toboggan Slide at a Ski Lodge, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-CE0374. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/summer-toboggan-slide-at-a-ski-lodge-1960s.
@misc{aaAA2026CE0374,
title = {Summer Toboggan Slide at a Ski Lodge, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-CE0374},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/summer-toboggan-slide-at-a-ski-lodge-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Summer Toboggan Slide at a Ski Lodge, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-CE0374 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/summer-toboggan-slide-at-a-ski-lodge-1960s ER -
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