Iola Firehouse Historical Marker
Marker location: Iola Winter Sports Club.
(County MM five miles northwest of the village)
Slaughter House Ski Hill
The first recorded ski jumping in Iola occurred on February 28, 1909, when an impromptu scaffolding constructed atop the hill in the West State and North Summit streets area hosted a local competition. The Iola Ski Club was organized on January 11, 1910; its first formalized tournament was conducted on that ski jump 19 days later. (See Historic Iola markers #1 and #9.)
Then, on December 29, 1910, Iola Herald reported; “A crew of carpenters have been busy several days this week erecting a (new) ski slide for the Iola Ski Club on the Taylor property about five blocks east of Main Street, which is said to be one of the biggest and best slides in this part of the state.” This location hosted its first competitive tournament on January 1, 1911, followed by another on February 22, 1911.
A ski jumper was captured lifting from the toe of the Slaughter House Ski Hill scaffold, in this vintage exposure prepared in 1911 by Iola’s W. R. Parks Studio, reputedly “one of the biggest and best slides” in this area at the time.
The new location soon assumed the Slaughter House Ski Hill identity, referencing a slaughter house built directly to its east. This hill was competitively active as the Iola Ski Club’s tournament site for only two years, being succeeded in 1913 by the Knutson Hill, built on the Clarence Knutson farm two miles southeast of the village near Black Lake.
The Slaughter House Ski Hill scaffold was constructed near the hogsback located on the west edge of what is now the Glacier Wood Golf Club course’s second fairway, about halfway between the dogleg sand traps and the green, with the landing bowl being the ice-covered marsh to the west. It remained a local jumping focal point until the Hogsback Ski Hill was developed elsewhere in 1938, being minimally maintained, refashioned and actively engaged by local youth thereafter into the 1950s as their beginner hill.
The legend and lore of Iola’s ski jumping traditions were initially captured at this location; since 1958 they have continued to build at the Iola Winter Sports Club’s Norseman Hill skiing complex, located on County MM five miles northwest of the village. Although the Slaughter House Ski Hill’s last scaffolding remains were removed more than 50 years ago, its namesake structure survives, located in the out-of-bounds area between the second and fourth fairways, serving as a golf course properties and supplies storage and maintenance building.