Maine's skiing heritage includes a rich alpine skiing past. From the 1950's through the early 1980's it was difficult to drive the roads of Maine in the winter without passing community ski areas all along the way. In many communities, the local ski hill was the cultural hub of the town and a source of great community pride. It was certainly an important part of the feeder system for the alpine ski industry in Maine.

Over the past 20 years however, the community ski areas of Maine have come under intense financial pressure from large alpine resorts, poor winters, and economic hardships in the local communities. The combined effect is that these areas are folding at an alarming rate and those that have been able to remain open have done so in many cases without sufficient capital to maintain a quality skiing experience.

As these local ski areas have disappeared, not only are the communities losing an important part of their cultural identity, the ski industry is also losing its infrastructure for developing the new skiers resorts depend on for survival. At the same time, the erosion of the traditional economic models in these rural communities has created rising unemployment rates, a shift from high paying mill and factory wages to service industry wages and an exodus of the youth, leaving to find opportunity elsewhere.

The Maine Winter Sports Center seeks to reestablish skiing as the dominant winter lifestyle in Maine by investing in the rural communities where skiing remains viable. Those investments will focus on improving the quality of both the alpine and the Nordic skiing experience. We want to make skiing at these community areas as accessible to families as possible. That means low ticket prices, low rental costs and programs that reach out to children and schools. Our goal is to create a new economic model for these communities, create healthier lifestyles for the youth and essentially develop a foundation for a quality of life that will inspire people to build their futures in these communities.