A little slice of decades-old ski history, built before many of America’s best-known resorts, isn’t rotting or crumbling away. Well, it was—until Middlebury Snowbowl, the ski area owned by Vermont’s Middlebury College, decided to pick it up and move it.
The cabin, named after an early race coach at Middlebury, Richard Hubbard, was loaded onto an extra-wide trailer by New England Building Movers this summer and carted a short distance to its new home, where it’s being restored.
The location change came with two main benefits. First, the Hubbard Cabin had no foundation, something any good building ought to have. Second, it was a bit far from the lifts and trails to effectively serve in its new role as HQ for the Middlebury Alpine Ski Team.
You may wonder: Is moving and preserving a ski cabin old enough to vote in the Eisenhower-Stevenson election fanciful? Maybe a little outlandish? Only in the way that nostalgic skiers often are—think of all the aged Riblets snapped up at auctions.
“It just seemed crazy to let this piece of history go,” said Middlebury emeritus trustee Churchill Franklin, who’s involved in the project.
Derrick Cram
The cabin’s story goes way back. Hubbard, along with the Civilian Conservation Corps and other members of the local community, built it in 1938 using spruce that was cut to make way for some of Snowbowl’s early ski trails on Worth Mountain. The cabin became one of North America’s first ski area base lodges, in good historical company with Oregon’s famed Timberline Lodge, which President Roosevelt dedicated a year earlier.
For just over two decades, the Hubbard Cabin filled the base lodge role, serving as a waypoint for arriving skiers and those looking to warm up. In 1962, when the Snowbowl built its current lodge, the Starr Shelter, the Hubbard Cabin became a caretaker’s residence and housed people who, in one way or the other, had a connection to the Snowbowl.
One couple, Ken and Carolyn Perine, who shared a letter with the Snowbowl about their time living at the Hubbard Cabin, spent the better part of three winters there. They arrived in 1975 after Ken was tapped to develop a recreational cross-country skiing program at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf Campus. While moving in, the ruckus attracted a stray dog, whose owners they couldn’t find. They adopted him and named him Odin.
“The nights were quiet with no television,” the Perines wrote. “Our entertainment was sitting on our couch in front of the large stone fireplace with a blazing fire, watching our furry, grey cohabitants scurry back and forth across the mantel!”
It’s one tale, among many, associated with the Hubbard Cabin. But in 2003, they stopped being written. After serving as a multi-purpose space for staff while the Starr Shelter was being renovated ahead of the 2003-04 season, the cozy hideout went into retirement and, eventually, faced neglect. Over the years, its roof started to sag.
Kim Essensa, the Snowbowl’s general manager, said that “nobody has been in there other than some animals in a very, very long time.”
Franklin worried that, one day, he’d come up to the Snowbowl after a big snowstorm and find that the Hubbard Cabin had finally collapsed. The fear wasn’t unwarranted. Whether it’s new development or Mother Nature, traces of the past at ski areas have a habit of disappearing. Sometimes, the woods swallow entire mountains that once hosted skiers and lifts.
Eric Kollorin, Courtesy Middlebury Snowbowl
The Snowbowl team decided that this wouldn’t happen to the Hubbard Cabin. A fundraiser for the restoration and improvements to the Starr Shelter is underway and has raised more than $500,000 so far. A local home renovation and construction outfit, M. Gale Builders, is working to spruce up the cabin.
Essensa noted that there was concern that the aged cabin wouldn’t survive the move, which happened on July 6.
“There was also talk about how much press to have” at that time, added Franklin. He said, with a laugh, that the movers explained that “this is only going to be exciting if it’s a disaster.”
On the morning of July 7, though, no local headlines read Historic Ski Cabin Destroyed at Middlebury Snowbowl Amid Ill-Fated Restoration Effort. They’d done it. From end to end, the move took about four hours. And while some of the logs needed to be replaced during the process, it was only a few, said Essensa.
“They built things to last back in the 30s,” she said.
For the Snowbowl, the success ticked a logistical box: with the new collegiate racing HQ, there’s more free space in the Starr Lodge, which is set to be used for a new shop and a refreshed bar area, per the fundraising plan.
But you can’t only quantify the Hubbard Cabin revival in those terms. During our conversation, both Essensa and Franklin highlighted Snowbowl’s rich, unique history.
It’s one of only a few college-owned ski areas and has played no small part in supporting Middlebury’s long-running alpine racing program. Aside from the director and assistant director, the Snowbowl’s patrol consists entirely of students (the vast majority of them are pre-med). The ski area’s roots run deep, and they’re still alive in the strong contingent of 80-plus-year-olds who hit the slopes this past winter. Even in its minor role, the cabin has been there, too, another thread in the local tapestry.
As Essensa said, it “means a lot to different people, and depending on who you were to ask.”
Now, the moments and memories that make a place like the Hubbard Cabin much more than a pile of logs will keep coming.
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