New England Skiing (Images of America Series) » (Reprint)

E. John B. Allen, an avid skier and prolific writer on the subject, has put together a collection of images, many taken from the New England Ski Museum, that details a sport vital to understanding the New England personality. New England Skiing will appeal to any reader, whether a graceful expert or simply a snow-drenched beginner, with its celebration of a sport marked by elegance and athleticism.

Skiing in New England has not always been such a breathtaking sport connected with winter vacations at distant and local resorts. From the early 1870s, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish immigrants utilized skis to carry the mail and to travel through the woods to school and work. Later, a group of college men at Dartmouth founded the Outing Club, which transformed skiing from everyday practicality into swift-moving recreation. Since that time, the excitement and exhilaration of skiing has spread nationwide. In this volume, we will explore the history of skiing in this region, from its early, simpler days of cross-country and jumping to the rising popularity of alpine skiing beginning in the 1930s. Rather than a technical history, this book concentrates on presenting a story that is fluid like the sport itself, focusing on places, personalities, and major innovations between the early 1870s and 1940.