Pico Mountain, One of America's Oldest Ski Areas
Near Killington, Vermont
Just north of Killington rises Pico Mountain, a smaller, older, and beloved neighbor that helped invent skiing in Vermont. Pico opened on Thanksgiving Day in nineteen thirty seven, one of the very first commercial ski areas in the state, founded by a determined couple named Brad and Janet Mead. In its earliest days skiers climbed a rope tow up Little Pico, or simply hiked the slope on skins.
Then Pico made history. In nineteen forty it installed the first T bar lift in the United States, a European style overhead tow that pulled two skiers uphill at once and changed how American mountains moved their crowds. Tragedy and persistence both marked its story.
The Mead family pressed on through the Second World War, and Pico endured long enough to become one of the thirty oldest continuously operating ski areas in the country. The Meads also raised a champion. Their daughter, Andrea Mead Lawrence, learned to ski on these very slopes and went on to win two gold medals at the nineteen fifty two Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway.
Today Pico is owned by Killington, a quieter mountain with a giant next door and a founding role in the sport.
