A Town Built by Ski Bums: The Story of Carrabassett Valley, Maine

Located 60 country miles from Interstate 95, Carrabassett Valley, Maine, doesn’t look like a classic rural New England town. Only a handful of buildings pre-date 1950. Settlement is concentrated in two areas separated by six woodsy miles: “the valley,” with its 1960s A-frames and camps, and “the mountain,” where the Sugarloaf ski resort has built a maze of contemporary condominium and housing developments, along with hotels, restaurants, and boutiques. But with just 673 year-round residents, the town of Carrabassett Valley — not Sugarloaf — owns a Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed golf course, a 2,000-acre ski-touring and mountain-bike park, an airport, a riverside rail trail, an advanced fitness center with indoor climbing wall and skate park, and a handsome modern library. Yet the town’s mil rate has never exceeded $8.40.

That’s because Carrabassett Valley doesn’t just look different from other towns; it does things differently. The two dozen ski bums who founded the town in 1972 laid out a vision for an outdoor recreation economy achieved through creative investment, and townspeople have focused unwaveringly on pursuing it ever since.

In addition to establishing and preserving a record of Carrabassett Valley's beginnings and development, A Town Built by Ski Bums recovers the area's lost history all the way back to the geological forces that created it.