Maine skiing heritage preserved in museum

The timing of the museum's opening is important. With the first generation of Maine skiers who took up the sport in the 1930s and '40s dying, a cache of historically valuable items in basements, attics and garages is being unearthed, Roberts said. People seem more than willing to donate or lend the museum their antique equipment.

On the day the museum opened, many of the 200 people who stopped by offered old skis, poles and boots. When it was clear their donations would be accepted, some returned with armfuls of additional gear, Roberts said.

The museum now has ample displays and more in an archive and storage area upstairs, but it hasn't yet reached the point of turning things away, she said.

The oldest piece on display is a ski resembling a weather-worn barnboard with a slightly bowed tip believed to date from the 1890s, a decade or so after the sport first caught on in Maine. Roberts said it was probably handmade and used by a farmer to get around in Maine's deep snow.

A pair of 8-foot wooden jumping skis as well as numerous sets of long, wooden skis, are also in the collection. The bindings -- ranging from primitive leather toe-loops, to bear traps and more modern variations as the sport grew in popularity -- reveal the ages of the skis.

Some are accompanied by bamboo poles with worn paint and baskets fashioned from leather and metal or wood.

A set of white skis and accompanying gaiters (a protective shell worn from knee to ankle to keep snow out) pay tribute to Mainers who were part of the famed 10th Mountain Division, an Army unit that trained in Colorado for winter and mountain warfare.

IF YOU GO ... SKI MUSEUM OF MAINE 109 Church Street St., Church Street Commons, Farmington, Maine; skimuseumofmaine.org or 207-491-5481. Wednesday-Saturday, 1 p.m.-4 p.m.; open year-round. Free admission. VERMONT SKI MUSEUM 1 S. Main St., Stowe, Vt.; vermontskimuseum.org or 802-253-9911. Open noon-5 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. Closed mid-April to Memorial Day and Halloween to Thanksgiving. Admission, $3; families, $5. NEW ENGLAND SKI MUSEUM Exit 34B, I-93, Franconia Notch Parkway, Franconia, N.H.; skimuseum.org or 603-823-7177. Open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed April-May. Free admission. COLORADO SKI MUSEUM, COLORADO SKI AND SNOWBOARD HALL OF FAME Located at the top of the Vail Transportation Center, Vail, Colo.; skimuseum.net or 970-476-1876. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Free admission. SKI MAINE skimaine.com (information on ski resorts in Maine) Source: The Associated Press

The 2006-07 exhibit focuses on Maine businesses that blossomed around the sport, such as Wilton's Bass Shoe, Norway's W.F. Tubbs Co. and Bangor's S.L. Crosby. At Paris Manufacturing Co., a ski maker, Finnish-American craftsmen skied to and from work, Roberts said.

An early catalog of Theo. A. Johnson Co. of Portland, whose boat-building venture turned to skis a little more than a century ago, trumpeted "The Winter Sport of Skeeing."

A Tubbs catalog gave a more elaborate pitch: "More and more, as people realize that an outdoor winter vacation on snow-clad hills and highways, on frozen lakes and rivers, is health-building _ a tonic as essential as a summertime vacation in the open; skis will be in even greater demand."

The museum's present site may or may not be the permanent one, said Greg Sweetser of the Ski Maine Association and a Maine Ski Museum board member. But Farmington "is a great first home base," he said.

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