What is the oldest ski shop in the country?
Div I ski racer Tyler Cunningham, now the 4th generation member of the Cunningham family to run the North Creek NY based ski shop.
A common answer to that question is Lahout’s in Littleton NH which was founded by Herbert Lahout who came to the US from Lebanon as a teenager and in 1920 started by selling dry goods from a horse drawn wagon throughout the White Mountains. After World War II. the store, then run by his son Joe, began selling ski gear and today there is the original store and seven more Lahout’s shops in the area where the business began.
However, it turns out now there is another shop with a claim to be the first.
As part of the recent research on the 90th anniversary of the first snow train to North Creek NY, local historians came up with records of The J.E. Cunningham General Store that opened in that Adirondack hamlet in 1918, two years before Lahout’s.
Today, more than 100 years later, both businesses run by their founding families, still operate in their hometowns
PJ Cunningham, who was born in Chestertown NY in 1871, was a New York Forest Ranger when he resettled his family in North Creek in 1908. He spent much of his time in the outdoors and became well know for his work building fire towers in the area. In 1918, he bought the general store in town and named it after his oldest son.
When business slowed in the 1920’s, his younger son Butler dropped out of his engineering studies at Union College to come home to help run the store. While there was no formal ski area at the time in North Creek, there was winter sliding on the logging roads from the nearby Barton Garnet Mines on Gore Mountain. Between mining and logging, the slopes outside the village had been largely stripped and and winter sliding on the open land was a popular pass time.
If you needed skis, Cunningham’s offered barrel staves rigged with boot toe straps mounted by a local harness shop.
Although primarily a mining and logging town, locals who visited the 1932 Olympic Games in Lake Placid saw the potential for winter recreation in their town 60 miles to the south. The North Creek Ski Bowl just outside the village was established in 1934. At first there was a rope tow that, in 1947, was replaced by the first T-bar in New York State. Butler Cunningham in 1949 became President of the Gore Mountain Lift Corporation and, while still running the store in town, opened a ski hut on the hill between the lodge and the lift.
Over the next decade, his son Pat was building his reputation as a ski racer. He competed for Norwich University and, after college, while in the US Army in Europe. he competed in the the iconic Hahnenkamm downhill race in Kitzbuhl Austria. He was training for a spot on the US ski team in the 1964 Winter Olympics when an elbow injury forced him out of competition. Pat came back to North Creek and subsequently joined the family business which was growing as New York opened its third state run ski center at Gore Mountain in town.
There were setbacks. The original store in town burned down in 1968. At the time, the Cunninghams were also running the retail shop at Gore Mountain. They would eventually lose the concession bid at the ski area, but by then a new store had been built in town on the site of an old horse barn less than a mile from the original general store location. Over the years, the business expanded to other locations including Cunningham’s across the street from the Olympic Center in Lake Placid.
Butler Cunningham died in 1985 and Pat ran the the business until his death two years ago. By then, Tyler Cunningham, a former Burke Academy and St Lawrence University ski racer, had given up a career as a derivatives trader on Wall Street to return home to the family business.
Tyler is the forth generation of the Cunningham family to run the business. It is the same story in New Hampshire where Ron Lahout, grandson of business founder Herbert, has been joined by nephew Anthony and more recently daughter Phebe.
So who can claim to be Number One?
Is it Cunningham’s, founded in 1918?
Is it Lahout’s, doing business in the same location since 1920?
Both families have now been in business in their hometowns, in ski country, for more than a century. It seems that should be more than enough to share bragging rights.
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Great post, Phil!
Technically, shouldn’t it be the one that first sold ski equipment? Which in both cases sounds like it came later than 1920 (NH) or 1918 (NY), respectively.
Hey Phil,
Love this lore about ski stores in New England! My first turns in probably 1962-63 were off the North Creek rope tow, and my fun vastly exceeded my exhaustion from being a small child trying to hold up a big fat rope!