PORTLAND, Maine — In 1958, a couple named Irv and Edna Judson opened a motel near Sugarloaf Mountain, the second tallest peak in Maine and the home of a ski area whose main lift at the time was a T-bar.
Judson’s Sugarloaf Motel billed itself in advertisements as “Your home away from home,” with "Dancing-TV-Excellent Hunting & Fishing” and a “Knotty Pine Dining Room.” Rates, which included breakfast and dinner, ranged from $7.50 to $9.50 per night.
Times certainly have changed, and the story of how this particular community grew and evolved is told by Virginia M. Wright in her new book, “A Town Built by Ski Bums – The Story of Carrabassett Valley, Maine.”
Carrabassett Valley is one of the youngest towns in the state, created in 1972 out of the unincorporated townships of Crockertown and Jerusalem. It had the advantage of starting with few obligations or commitments.
“Other than timber harvesting, skiing was the town’s only industry in 1972," Wright notes. "There were no mills to revive or repurpose, no locals to alienate, no power structure to buck.”
From Sugarloaf’s beginnings in the 1950s, the ski area and the town have often been thought of as one and the same. Not so, but they do collaborate to an extraordinary degree. To name just one of the examples Wright cites: “Carrabasset Valley and Sugarloaf have created what may be the country’s only public/private police force.”
“It’s unique,” the town manager told her of the way the municipality operates. “It’s an amazing model.”
What else makes Carrabassett Valley like no other community in Maine? Watch our interview with Wright and former town selectman John Beaupre to learn more.