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If the old station wagon wasn’t about to make it to Vermont, Long Islanders in Suffolk and Nassau had the option for skiing a bit closer to home, in Smithtown.
Merrywood Ski Area used to operate at what’s now Smithtown Landing Golf Course. Merrywood featured an intermediate slope and a novice slope, which ran next to each other, with a tow rope for each. The ski area in its initial form opened in the winter of 1962-63, according to this Golfdom golfing magazine article, which goes into great detail about the Merrywood golf club and ski area.
From the start Merrywood featured night-skiing and snowmaking.
“Our clubhouse is ideally situated to take care of the needs of our skiiers,” the ski area’s managing director, Joe Maietta, told the magazine in 1967.
“It’s near the base of the intermediate slope (near the 18th green in the golf season) and is one of the reasons [club owner and founder Arther E. Poole] decided to expand the original house on that site into our present clubhouse. He envisioned a ski operation at Merrywood from the start.”
Nearly 30 ski instructors worked at the slope, the report reads.
One former instructor from Northport who ran an after-school program for two seasons with the Plainview School District said the Merrywood Ski Area closed after the 1969 or 1970 season.
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More ski history on LI
Top: Photo credit: Golfdom magazine, January 1967/MSU Libraries.
