Highland Lodge and Cross Country Center

Greensboro, Orleans County, Vermont

"Highland Lodge & XC Ski Center, Caspian Lake, Greensboro, VT 05841. www.highlandlodge.com. 802-533-2647. FAX 802-533-7494. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 60 km trails, 60/40 km machine tracked/skating terrain. Instruction, rental. General info: Located in the Greensboro-Craftsbury snowbelt, we have snow when others don't. Breathtaking views of the Northeast Kingdom. Never crowded. Full-service ski shop including ski and snowshoe rentals and a cabbed Zifco Turpulk. Check out our website for ski conditions." -Ski Vermont Magazine, 2005

Location: 1608 Craftsbury Road, Greensboro, VT 05841

Directory listings: 1974-2012

Known operators: David and Wilhelmina Smith

Today: Highland Lodge was closed in October 2011; trails maintained by local residents and Craftsbury Outdoor Center

Highland Lodge

a 2011 Highland Lodge photo with the caption "Nordic skiing starts right at the lodge..."

from tripadvisor.com

History

Since the 1920s, The Highland Lodge has offered lodging as a farmhouse, boarding house, and then as an inn. David in Wilhelmina Smith served as longtime owners and operators of the Highland Lodge as it was purchaed by Wilhelmina's parents in 1954. As early as 1974, David and Wilhelmina Smith began offering cross country skiing as a way to attract winter guests and keep the inn open year round. Fifty landowners allowed the inn to cut and maintain trails on their properties and the inn offered skiing to both guests and Greensboro residents alike.

The Highland Lodge trail system started out offering approximately 30 miles of marked trails and had their first apparent major expansion in 1986 when they jumped from 15 km machine tracked and 45 km total trails in the 1985 directory to 55 km machine tracked and 75 km total trail in the 1986 directory. 1986 was also the first year they began listed a fee for trail use.

The Highland Lodge spent almost 30 years in the ski buisness and decades more as an inn. In October of 2011 the Smith's made the tough decision to close the lodge. A WCAX local news story on the Highland Lodge, and the Smith's themselves, attribute the closing to changing times: "...Families want more." According to Wilhemina Smith, the families that have frequented the inn for generations "are getting older and the new ones aren't coming...I think we are just an old fashioned type of place that is dying with the times." The Highland Lodge was put up for sale in 2012.

In 2011, a group of Greensboro residents and the Craftsbury Outdoor Center have partenered together to keep open and maintain the Highland Lodge's trail network despite the lodge's closing.

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See full listing of directory entries from Highland Lodge and Cross Country Center here.

Read the full story of the Highland Lodge closing from WCAX.com here.

Read Craftsbury Outdoor Center's News bulletin on the preservation of the Highland Lodge trails here.