Mohawk Memories

The quintessential follow-up to last summer’s exhibit at the Cornwall Historical Society, Mohawk Mountain: The Snow Story, was published in autumn 2024. It is the book, Mohawk Mountain Ski Area – The Birth of Snowmaking, that tells the story of skiing pioneer Walt Schoenknecht who started in Cornwall and inspired winter sports worldwide. On February 2 at 4 PM, author James Shay will give a talk about his research work at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon (10 Upper Main Street, reservations required).

This is the Chronicle story on how his excellent book came to be.

The Birth of Snowmaking

Hardly anybody retiring from journalism and looking for something else to do, would end up in a ski shop helping kids find the right equipment and having some fun. But this came naturally to James Shay. As a young reporter in the Naugatuck Valley, he had written ski columns with a passion. Admittedly he “wasn’t a very good skier at the time,” but things changed. His skills and his intimate knowledge of winter sports destinations all across the country and in Europe grew as well. He didn’t just visit a few fancy resorts, he developed an appreciation for smaller ski areas too.

Like our very own Mohawk Mountain, a “throwback to an earlier time of skiing,” as Shay says. “A very laid back, family friendly place.” One winter he worked in the rental department and realized that most customers had no idea of the influential role this place and its founder, Walt Schoenknecht, played in the history of American winter sports. His professional instincts kicked in again and he did what journalists do: research, interview and then write about a topic that deserves to be covered for posterity.

The result has just been published. The scholarly title, Mohawk Mountain Ski Area – The Birth of Snowmaking (History Press, South Carolina, $24.99), signals the ambition to be more than a neat coffee table book with lots of photos and some animated prose marinated in nostalgia. The 194-page monograph delivers an avalanche of comprehensive and well-sourced information about the many different things that brought Mohawk Mountain’s scenic western slopes to life and made skiing in Cornwall unique and attractive.

The book doesn’t only celebrate the contribution of Peg and Walt Schoenknecht, two ambitious skiers from the New Haven area with a missionary zeal to convince everyone from near and far to try the sport. It also recalls a group of engineers from Fairfield County who installed the first snowmaking machines in Cornwall and changed the face of modern skiing. And it explains in some detail what Connecticut’s first and largest ski area had to face to survive many difficult winters and that terrible summer in 1989 when two tornadoes, not just one, destroyed lift towers, buildings, and trees and caused $2.5 million in damages.

In recent winters “Mohawk and other ski areas were struggling,” Shay pointed out in an interview with the Chronicle. “We had rainstorms and warm temperatures.” But this season looks promising. In late 2024, overnight temperatures dropped early and deep. “The signs are there,” he said to plans for “a hell of a lot of skiing.” While writing the book last winter “cut into my ski time, I think it’ll be pretty awesome.”

—Juergen Kalwa