A local, historic ski hill in southwest Colorado is celebrating an unprecedented makeover this season.

Operators in Durango have praised the investment for ushering the 70-year-old Chapman Hill into the 21st century: about $3 million in upgrades, according to Kelli Jaycox, the city’s assistant recreation director.

Chapman’s two rope tows have been replaced. That includes the one long known as “big tow,” brought over from the 10th Mountain Division’s World War II-era training grounds near Leadville.

“Big tow” is now a Leitner-Poma platter lift. And the similarly outdated “little tow” is now a modernized Telecord tow.

“The rope tows were so old. … They were barely squeaking by,” Jaycox said. “We were having a lot of issues keeping them operating. So it was time to get upgraded. And I can say it exceeded our thoughts on how many people would be coming.”

Jaycox said 701 season passes have been sold, up from 554 for the 2023-24 season. Considering little snowfall to date, she counted herself pleased, too, by the 1,510 daily tickets sold through the end of January ($16 for adults).

Conditions have been helped by updated snowmaking and a new snowcat. This season’s investment also came with new lighting — continuing a night skiing tradition among generations of young families and after-school racers.

Since 1955, Chapman Hill has been the local spot for learning and honing skills.

“Not that many people who grew up in Durango haven’t grown up skiing there, and now their kids are skiing there,” Jaycox said.

Now, it seems to her, more out-of-town visitors are opting for affordable lessons over the nearby, much larger Purgatory Resort. Chapman Hill tallied 282 group and private lessons last season.

“I skied there the other day, and every single (platter) was taken from top to bottom, and there was a line. It was really cool to see that,” Jaycox said. Previously, “you didn’t have that many people on big tow, because not that many people could ski it before.”

Skiers had to hold tight to the rope for the steep, tiring ascent. Now they straddle the platters. “Getting to the top of the hill is much easier,” Jaycox said.

Likewise, the new Telecord is “more friendly,” she said. And thanks to grading and realigning both lifts, more terrain and freestyle park features have opened up along the humble hill rising 500 vertical feet.

Familiar with other municipal-run ski hills around Colorado, Jaycox thought of the multimillion-dollar job as “rare.”

Howelsen Hill, the state’s oldest ski area in Steamboat Springs, opened a new chairlift for the 2021-22 season — what operators there, similar to those at Chapman Hill, said represented “a new era.” Bygone eras are otherwise represented at such hills around the state: rusted rope tows and T-bars, if anything.

These “community and independent ski areas” nationwide were the advocacy focus of Mountain Riders Alliance before the group’s disbanding in 2021.

In the age of mega resorts and consolidation, the local hills were “a dying breed,” a co-founder of that group, Jamie Schectman, previously told The Gazette. “An endangered species at best.”

Bigger than Chapman Hill and smaller than Purgatory Resort, nearby Hesperus Ski Area remained closed this season after a reported mechanical failure in 2023. Hesperus ownership was said to be weighing the financial future approaching this winter.

The increased demand at Chapman Hill is no wonder, Jaycox said.

“Some people don’t want to go to Purgatory or have the money, or they just want to go somewhere quick after school,” she said. “Not everybody realizes what these little, local ski hills can do for a community or what they mean.”

They are “invaluable breeding grounds,” Melanie Mills, president and CEO of trade association Colorado Ski Country USA, said in a previous interview. “And we need as many of them around as we can possibly keep operating.”