Do you remember…Snow Valley?
Staff Reports December 11, 2020
Believe it or not, Kellyville, Oklahoma once had a ski slope. In mid-1971, after reportedly traveling 3,000 miles in Oklahoma in one week, “looking for a good hill,” Willis Barrows selected Kellyville as the site of “Oklahoma’s first ski area.” He told the press that he stopped in the small community and “There I was, looking at this fine ridge.”
Barrows, a Vermont native who moved to California to become a ski instructor and who later managed a ski resort in Big Bear Lake, California, leased seven acres of what was described as three good slopes from J.D. Goodman. The land is between Highway 66 and Heyburn Road.
He convinced local “investors” that once temperatures fell below freezing, he could cover five acres with 5 inches of snow in approximately eight hours. He told them he could run the slope for 30 days with just 10 freezing nights.
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He promised that Snow Valley would have ski tows, in