The land that is now Sunburst Ski Area was originally a hill farmed by the Becker family. In 1961 two Milwaukee area families, the Casey's and the Christiansen's, who had been looking for a ski able hill near Milwaukee for their families bought the land from the Becker's. Together the two families cleared the hill for a main run and a beginner's run, installed two lifts, a 1,200 foot T-bar imported from Germany and a rope tow and "Wunderburg" was born. Soon the two families found out just how much work a ski hill actually was and in 1971 sold it to a group of investors from Milwaukee including Mr. Bob Niss who owned the Blizzard traveling ski club. This group renamed the area "Sunburst". They built a ticket office, rental building and added another rope tow and chairlift. Sunburst was a popular place for ski groups under the direction of the owner/manager, Herb Smith.
In 1984 Jim and Kim Engel bought the area and over the past twenty-five years have remodeled every building on the property including the chalet and ticket office. They also built a new rental building, increased the number of rental skis and added snowboards. In addition they built two maintenance buildings and purchased four state of the art grooming machines.
On the hill they have added two more chairlifts, two rope tows and lights on every run. An expert hill and three terrain parks were added to add fun and excitement for experts. In 1997 they added a snow tubing operation. They built a tubing chalet and developed a tubing hill with 20 lanes;12 straight chutes and 8 luge chutes.
Snowmaking is the name of the business in Wisconsin. Sunburst has 100% coverage for its snowmaking system with underground pipes and wiring to make it state of the art. Sunburst has been one of the first area in Wisconsin to open every one of the last 12 years. The earliest opening date was November 3, 2006 and the latest closing was March 21, 1998. |
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