Vermont Historical Society

Harris Hill Ski Jump – The First 100 Years by the Harris Hill Centennial Book Committee 

Brattleboro, Vermont, published by Harris Hill Ski Jump, Inc., 2021, 120 pages

Vermont is home to a number of places that loom large in the history of winter sports, both regionally and nationwide. Places such as Gilbert’s Hill, Mount Mansfield, and a host of resorts from Bromley to Mount Snow are well known to historians for their innovative techniques, colorful personalities, and lasting impacts on recreation here and elsewhere. Harris Hill Ski Jump – The First 100 Years reminds us that a once-modest ski jump in Brattleboro deserves a position among the giants of Vermont’s winter-sports history as well. 

Harris Hill gets its name from Brattleboro native Fred Harris, who as a college student in 1922 built a pioneering ski jump in his hometown. Harris’s jump eventually became a training site for premier jumpers, a proving ground for future Olympians, and a home to high-profile annual competitions as well as numerous national championships. Harris Hill Ski Jump tells this story through a series of short, generously illustrated chapters that trace an arc from the jump’s heady, early decades through a period of decline in the last decades of the twentieth century, to its re- construction and promising future at the start of the twenty-first. The chapters collectively highlight Harris Hill’s development, the evolution of ski jumping (including a very informative section on the changing styles of jumpers in flight), and the centrality of jumpers from Vermont and, more specifically, the Brattleboro area itself. But perhaps above all else, the chapters highlight the efforts of committed supporters and community leaders to manage and sustain the jump. It would be hard to read this book and not gain an appreciation for their work. There is a can-do spirit running throughout this narrative that will speak to many Vermonters, and that allows the book to highlight Brattleboro’s rightful place in the larger history of ski jumping. 

Harris Hill Ski Jump – The First 100 Years is itself a product of that same collaborative spirit. The book was published by a dedicated committee of Harris Hill enthusiasts; its text was written by Vermont journalist, Kevin O’Connor; and the research and design teams included a wide range of specialists. But it is the book’s illustrations—also drawn from a variety of sources, including private collectors and the venerable Brattleboro Reformer—that make it a page-turner. The drama of ski jumping and the enthusiasm that spectators and participants have for the sport have clearly left behind a rich photographic heritage, and one can imagine that the book’s editors had some difficult choices to make about what to include and what to leave out. 

One of the qualities that readers might appreciate most about this book is the way its illustrations highlight changes in the sport over time, while at the same time capturing something of its enduring essence. The best expression of this is its use of a reoccurring image showing a lone, air-borne jumper, photographed from behind and silhouetted above rapt spectators in the foreground and an outrun and parking lot far below. At first, I found myself flipping between the book’s pages and focusing on the differences in these images from one decade to the next: the differences between styles of jumping and the clothing worn by spectators; the growing density of forests on the surrounding hillsides; and the changing styles of cars (and even the presence of horses) in the parking lot. 

But as interesting as these differences are, I also found myself drawn to a core similarity running through the silhouetted-jumper photographs—a similarity born of repetition that suggests something more universal and timeless about both ski jumping and the history of Harris Hill. On the one hand, the photographs moved me to contemplate whatever it is about the human spirit that makes someone want to fly as a silhouette against the sky. The image of a jumper frozen in mid-flight seemed to amplify the magnitude of their effort in a particularly dramatic way—one that was enhanced further by the expressions on the faces of spectators below. The repetition of that image through the years evoked in me an emotive response that felt somehow timeless and elemental, giving the book a resonance that transcended the specifics of its subject. On the other hand, the magnitude of the jumper’s flight moved me to contemplate whatever it is that makes people come together to create—literally, to build—the kinds of spaces necessary for such displays of human emotion to flourish. This is unquestionably a book about a very local place and a very specific sport, but it is also a book that can make you think more broadly about how communities work together to make positive things happen, in this case to bring joy to the jumper and to the audience for which they perform. For readers eager to imagine that communities can indeed still coalesce around a common objective designed to serve a greater good, the story of Harris Hill offers a surprising and welcome reason to believe. 

Blake Harrison 

Blake Harrison has worked for decades in a mix of agriculture and academics in New England, and is the author of The View from Vermont: Tourism and the Making of an American Rural Landscape (2006). VHS book review