Valley Hi

How Valley Hi began

Valley Hi is a small village straddling Jefferson and Monroe townships, built on hillside terrain unusually steep for western Ohio, a few miles south of Zanesfield. It grew up around a ski resort: farmer-turned-developer John Shoots bought 307 acres of hillside in 1958, opened Valley High Ski Area in December 1962, and the surrounding settlement incorporated as its own village in 1968 with twenty-five residents. The resort, renamed Mad River Mountain in 1975 and now owned by Vail Resorts, has grown into the largest ski area in Ohio; the village itself grew alongside it, reaching 228 residents at the 2020 census.

Incorporated 1968, by residents of the settlement that had grown up around the Valley High ski resort.

Where the name comes from

The village takes its name from the Valley High ski resort around which it grew, itself named for its hillside, high-valley setting on steep terrain unusual for flat western Ohio; the resort operated as 'Valley High' from its 1962 opening until it was renamed Mad River Mountain in 1975.

Before the town

No source consulted names a Native American village, trail, mound or earthwork specifically within the land that became Valley Hi; the village did not exist as a settlement before the 20th century, and its ground was part of the open farmland and hills of Jefferson and Monroe townships. It lies a few miles from Zanesfield, itself built on the site of the Wyandot village Zane's Town and the Shawnee capital Wapatomica, and Valley Hi's southern edge reaches into Monroe Township, where the Shawnee town of Mackachack once stood. The steep, hilly terrain that made this spot suitable for a ski resort in the 20th century was the same terrain that shaped Wyandot and Shawnee travel and settlement patterns in the 1700s, favoring the flatter valley bottoms nearby over the ridge itself, though no source consulted states this directly for this specific tract.

Timeline

1. 1958 — John Shoots purchased 307 acres of hillside farmland on County Road 5, south of Zanesfield, the tract that became the ski resort and later the village.
2. 1959 — Skier Fred McPeck suggested to Shoots that the steep hillside be developed into a ski area.
3. September 28, 1961 — Ohio Resorts, Inc., doing business as Valley High, was formally incorporated as a company.
4. December 15, 1962 — Valley High Ski Area opened, with over 1,000 people attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included Governor James Rhodes and State Representative Roger Cloud.
5. 1968 — The village of Valley Hi incorporated with twenty-five residents; its first official act as a village was to approve the sale of liquor within its boundaries.
6. 1975 — John Shoots and fellow investors sold their stock in the resort to Charles P. Conrad, who renamed it Mad River Mountain.
7. 1986 — The Martin Marmon House, a Quaker house built around 1820 a few miles away in Jefferson Township near Zanesfield, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it is the NRHP listing that shares Valley Hi's ZIP code but stands outside the village itself.

Stories

A ski hill built where western Ohio has almost no hills

Western Ohio is famously flat, which is what makes the terrain around Valley Hi unusual: a stretch of unusually steep, ridged ground a few miles south of Zanesfield. In 1958 John Shoots bought 307 acres of that hillside as farmland on County Road 5. The idea to turn it into a ski resort came from Fred McPeck, an avid skier, who talked Shoots into the venture in the spring of 1959. After incorporating as Ohio Resorts, Inc. in September 1961 and grading slopes over the following year, the resort opened as Valley High Ski Area on December 15, 1962, drawing more than a thousand people to its ribbon-cutting despite a snowstorm just days before; Governor James Rhodes himself took part in the ceremony. The settlement that grew up to serve the resort's staff and visitors became its own village in 1968, population twenty-five, whose very first act as an incorporated village was to legalize liquor sales within its borders. The resort changed hands and names in 1975, becoming Mad River Mountain, and has since grown under a series of owners — most recently Vail Resorts — into the largest ski area in Ohio, expanding from three original trails to sixteen.

Photographs

Local history sources: peakofohio.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Mountainview Mobile Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-05-26
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-26

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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