Ski Terre Haute, Revisited

If you were a college student sometime in the 1970s or 80s, you may have seen one of the most famous posters for a mythical ski area: Ski Terre Haute.

The poster was meant to attract students to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, based in Terre Haute, Indiana. “Terre Haute” is French for “high ground,” an adjective that most people would not use to describe Indiana. The officials at the engineering school knew that but decided to play off of anyway. The result was a tongue-in-cheek poster extolling the  65-foot vertical drop available to skiers.

Recently, I received a note from Richard Braley, who designed the poster. Here’s an excerpt of his note:

In December I received an email from a media firm in Terre Haute wanting to shoot a video of me and the story behind the Ski Terre Haute poster. The school’s alumni Winter 2016 magazine Echoes did a feature on the poster. This video was done in conjunction with “The Haute Initiative,” featuring a series of promotional videos on the Terre Haute community. 

This video on Ski Terre Haute was to be the first of the series tying in to the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Here’s the YouTube video-

——————————————————————————————–
This article preceded the video in their alumni magazine “Echoes.”

Thank you for telling us the rest of the story, Richard!