Hey guys, I've always been interested in lost ski areas, mostly for the hopes of finding some cool backcountry runs that i could hike to, so i've done considerable research into marble mountain. Heres the deal as far as i know:
Marble mountain was originally developed sometime in the late 30's, prior to that all skiing was done by a sno cat driving up the whiteface memorial highway and dropping skiers off, so marble mountain was the first real established area (along with some much smaller rope tows, i believe one was in saranac) Anyway, the state started looking into developing a bigger area in the early 50's and they did Tests on where snow accumulated most between marble, whiteface, and i believe marcy was involved as well, but was pulled out of the running early based on accesibility issues. Anyway, Whiteface won over marble and lookout based on snowfall, and the state abandoned marble once what we now know of as whiteface was opened in 1956.
I hope all my dates are right, i read the article quite a while ago