In 1938, four years after the first trails were cut at Middlebury College’s Snowbowl in Hancock, volunteers teamed up with the Civilian Conservation Corps to build a log cabin that became the downhill ski area’s first base lodge.
Named for Richard Hubbard, an alumni member of that construction crew who became the school’s first Alpine ski coach, it served as the lodge until 1962 — when the modernist Neil Starr Shelter, with its triangular footprint and soaring, three-story wall of windows, filled that role. Modest Hubbard Cabin went on to house a rotating cast of people, organizations and wildlife before, ever so slowly, starting to sink.
It stood on a wetland, Snowbowl general manager Kim Essensa said, “literally in a swamp.” Its roof sagged. A two-foot hump rose in the middle of the floor. Gaping holes appeared between logs; the doors and windows wouldn’t shut. When Essensa was hired in 2024, one of the first decisions she was asked to make was what to do with Hubbard Cabin.
This summer, in an exercise Hubbard himself would likely consider a supreme compliment or a spectacular folly, Middlebury College braced, strapped and secured the old structure; hoisted it onto three moving dollies; prayed that the massive exterior stone chimney wouldn’t fall off; and pulled it 1,500 feet to dry ground on the other side of Starr Shelter. Restored and expanded, it now stands “just as taut as can be,” said Derrick Cram, a Middlebury College business manager. The cabin is home for the college’s Alpine ski team. A new addition — the cabin had one in the past — houses coaches’ offices and the mountain’s race crew.
Moving the ski team out of the Starr Shelter allows the Snowbowl to better serve members of the public in the main lodge. A new condiment bar will streamline cafeteria service. Skiers in children’s programs will have a warming area with kid-size stools and counters. Adults will get a second-floor bar with views of the slopes.
The $1.2 million project — which includes lodge renovations as well as the cabin restoration — will be funded by donors. About half the money has been raised.
Building a new log cabin probably would have been cheaper, many of those involved acknowledge. Hubbard Cabin hadn’t been used for anything but storage for 23 years. But tearing it down, general manager Essensa said, was not an option.
Hubbard Cabin hadn’t been used for anything but storage for 23 years.
“The first thing I realized here when I started is that the roots run so deep with our locals and with our Middlebury alumni,” she said. Generations of families have skied at the Snowbowl. People get married there. They speak lovingly of how arriving at the no-frills ski area is like stepping into a childhood memory: This is what skiing used to be like.
The cabin seemed to be the hub of all that, Essensa said. What’s more, it may be the oldest base lodge in the country. Middlebury can’t say for certain — the National Ski Areas Association doesn’t keep track of such things — but a sign once affixed to the cabin’s exterior stated as much.
Boots once thawed next to its woodstove, according to Cram, a third-generation Snowbowl employee. As he wrote in his account of the restoration project, “Race wax was scraped from skis. Lifelong friendships were formed over cups of hot chocolate.”
Post-lodge days, the cabin became housing for various Middlebury staff members. Charlie and Madeline Rockwell moved there in 1974, when they were the Snowbowl’s ski school directors. Their well-worn home, backed by a stand of pines, offered few amenities. “We became accustomed to black bears sharing our environs enroute to wherever they were going,” Charlie said in written recollections. They threw pencil erasers at mice scurrying along their living room walls and added more chinking between logs to keep snow out.
Those hand-hewn logs came from Worth Mountain, home of the ski area.
Tear the cabin down? “We all considered it, I think,” Essensa said, “but the answer was no. It’s too good to let go.” So excavators arrived to dig tunnels under the building to allow steel beams to slide underneath. As soon as the cabin was lifted, it began to straighten out.
Crews constructed a short road over the grass to accommodate the 45,000-pound load. Once the cabin was stabilized — “We braced it and then braced it again,” contractor Mark Gale said — moving day arrived.
On July 6, before a clutch of spectators, Lou Nop hitched an excavator to the front dolly to begin the crawl to the new site. “This is either going to be really dull or a disaster,” the owner of New England Building Movers jokingly told Churchill Franklin, a 1971 Middlebury grad and Snowbowl Task Force member.
Four hours later, the cabin arrived intact, chimney and all. Once again, it was lifted into the air, about nine feet this time, to allow workers to pour the foundation’s concrete walls.
Then restoration began. M. Gale Builders and Custom Woodworking of East Middlebury did the work. The three bottom rows of logs were rotten, Gale said, but he was able to replace them with logs that had served as an interior wall between the cabin and its old addition. Thus, all logs remain original. Most were badly weather-damaged and had been treated with creosote, paint and a variety of other coatings. Gale’s crew stripped those off and applied conditioner, two coats of stain and a top coat. Workers filled cracks in the logs with a chinking product — gallons of it, Gale said.
They erected pine walls around the perimeter of the interior, allowing foam insulation to be sprayed in. Live-edge maple, cut from a tree in alum Franklin’s backyard, forms bench seats. Tap holes are visible on some.
The addition’s board-and-batten exterior mirrors that of the Starr lodge. Similarly, stones along the foundation walls were selected to complement those that make up the chimney. The nearly 90-year-old cabin now sits closer to the ski lifts and features elements to ensure that it remains upright.
Four steel rods called collar ties extend across the pitched ceiling to keep the walls from spreading. Steel plates and a large steel rod hold the chimney against the cabin. The nuts and bolts in the assembly are giant, like those found on a bridge, Gale said. If the chimney were to move now, “it would have to take the whole side of the cabin with it.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Cabin Fever | Fervent supporters of Middlebury’s Snowbowl preserve its original base lodge, a log cabin”
This article appears in Winter Preview • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
