Postcard New England

The early days of skiing in the United States were wild and woolly, with rope tows, aristocratic instructors, and five-to-a-room boarding houses

By Eric Hanson

Might not be bad at that, you know.... The Christianias and the stemming and the plotzing and the schussing. Hot buttered rum—light on the butter. And snow.
—Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954)

Before Bing Crosby invented New England in the popular mind as a countryside of farmhouse inns operated by pipe-smoking baritones, there already was a growing claque of aficionados of Vermont and New Hampshire winters.