Yawgoo Valley

The idea for Yawgoo Valley reportedly dates back to the early 1960s, when Richard Downs was working on his parents' summer camp property and sought to develop a winter business, per New England Ski History. At a neighbor's suggestion, Downs acquired property on Yorker Hill and, circa mid-1964, commenced cutting ski trails, with University of Rhode Island student Maxwell de Wardener on the construction crew. Yawgoo Valley likely opened as a small rope-tow-served area for the 1964-65 season; one year later a new Hall double chairlift made it Rhode Island's first chairlift-served ski area. Max de Wardener took over the ski school circa 1968 after becoming a business teacher at Coventry High School; after running the school for over a decade, his Ski Pro, Inc. purchased the ski area from Downs for $300,000 in December 1980. A second double chairlift, Conan, arrived for the 1989-90 season, and a water park and nine-hole pitch-and-putt golf course were added in the 1990s. With Ski Valley's closure after the 1984-85 season, Yawgoo Valley became Rhode Island's only ski area — a status New England Ski History's own page opens by stating plainly, and the New England Lost Ski Areas Project corroborates: "Only one still exists today-Yawgoo Valley." New England Ski History's page, dated November 5, 2019 per its own footer, states that "Yawgoo Valley continues to be owned and operated by the de Wardener family to this day, as Max and Patti's daughter Tracy Hartman has taken over as General Manager" — attributed and dated to that 2019 source rather than asserted as current. Yawgoo Valley's own homepage carries the phrase "Rhode Island's ONLY Year Round Family Fun Destination!" only inside its HTML title tag, not in visible body text; its separate meta description instead reads, "Rhode Island's only Ski Area & Water Park located just a short drive from Providence in Exeter."