It was a cold Friday night at Nutt Hill Winter Park in the small town of Plymouth, Wis., early in the 2025-26 season when Joe Van Derven knew the hard work to revive the 110-foot vertical hill had been worth all the stress, worry, and angst.
“It was about 9 p.m. and I walked by the firepit. There were about 16 teens sitting around it; guys and girls out in the fresh winter air just being together,” says Van Derven. “I think they hung out until about 10:45. That was my ‘aha’ moment; the instant I knew we’d done this right, and for the right reasons.”
Doing it right means that this little hill is a spare but practical operation. One conveyor lift. One lodge. Fire pit at the base. (All the infrastructure, including the snowmaking system, is new.) Trails to skier’s left. Tubing hill to skier’s right.
Located in the self-proclaimed Cheese Capital of the World about 15 minutes from Sheboygan, Nutt Hill was founded in 1962 on property previously owned by Drs. Charles and Genivera Nutt. The Nutts left it in their will to Clara Stienecker, who subsequently donated the land to the city of Plymouth, which eventually built a small but central ski hill on it with two trails and a rope tow, along with a rudimentary warming building. Situated directly in the middle of a residential neighborhood, it felt—to the locals—like the heartbeat of the town.
Then came 2014 and, due to financial challenges and aging infrastructure, Nutt Hill ceased operation. A consistent lack of natural snow made the ski area reliant on snowmaking, but an electrical failure doomed the aging equipment and the city opted not to invest in fixing it, so Nutt Hill went dark.
No one, Van Derven says, felt right about it.
A key component of Nutt Hill’s revival was the installation of a conveyor lift, which replaced a defunct rope tow and serves both the ski/ride trails and the tubing runs.
A Big Idea
Fast forward to just a few years ago. One day, Van Derven was chatting with friends, and Nutt Hill came up. He’d been talking to the city mayor and other officials about finding a path to reopen the hill. A friend happened to serve on the board for a local soccer complex and knew the municipal ropes.
That was the start of what can be described as an old-school community project. A lofty goal fueled by passion, patience, and planning, along with a few dollops of nostalgia and a whole lot of get-your-hands-dirty hard work. Reopening Nutt Hill sounds like the central theme of a Hallmark movie, but it’s a true-life tale.
Van Derven reached out to a few friends and business associates he thought might care about the project and planned regular meetings. Around the table at Hub City Family Restaurant (the local diner) and The Roadside Bar and Grill, another local spot, the group planned, debated, and fundraised in support of their mission to make Nutt Hill the heartbeat of the town once again.
Joining Van Derven at the table were, among others, Heiliger Huegel Ski Club (Wis.) general manager Brad Marcouiller and Ryan Stubbs, who is now the director of the Gogebic Community College Ski Area Management program. Van Derven formed Cheese Capital Winter Park, a nonprofit organization, in 2022 to raise funds and eventually operate Nutt Hill.
Together, they assembled a large group of supporters with all kinds of expertise—from builders and landscapers to bankers and more. Van Derven believes they all shared two traits that made this work: Happy memories of the hill and a desire for new generations to create memories of their own.
“Most of the business owners who support this learned to ski at Nutt Hill,” he says. “So, our timing was right. If we waited 10 years to do this, I don’t think we’d have been successful.”
But successful they were, in large part because of how they approached the effort from the start.
Community Buy-In
The group knew they’d never succeed without community buy-in and total support. That meant lots of meetings, some large and others small, says Stubbs. They took the time to sit down with every department in town and as many residents as they could—sometimes over breakfast, sometimes over a beer, sometimes in the side room of the fire station.
They didn’t just share their plans, they listened. When the neighbors worried that the location of the 580-foot Sunkid conveyor lift, the only lift serving the hill, would make it an eyesore in summer, the group resketched the plans, moving it to be less visible.
When locals worried about noise, they rewrote their budget to include a quieter PistenBully 100 snowcat. And when locals were worried about water runoff, they added an engineered system with underground piping to the plan to alleviate that.
They also took steps to make it not just a project happening in the community, but happening with the community. In a macro way, they did this by pledging to use, every time possible, local businesses for work on and around the project. They also pledged to make Nutt Hill an affordable experience.
That sat well in the tight-knit community, Van Derven says, and soon enough, they had secured the cornerstone gifts to give the project momentum. Cheese Capital raised the $2.3 million needed to get Nutt Hill up and running ahead of the 2025-26 season. Gifts came large and small; all were celebrated. Any donation over $250 got the donor a personalized brick on the lodge fireplace. As of October 2026, total fundraising reached $2.8 million and counting.
They did some fun little extras, too, like the naming contest for the two trails and the tubing area. Entries were sought from locals, and judges did a blind vote. A local teen won, submitting all three winning names—Docs’ Descent, Cheddar Shredder, and Oh! Nutts!
“He owns part of that hill now, and his family will always have that memory,” Stubbs says. The winner’s family was also awarded season passes.
Making It Happen
As the project progressed during the summer of 2025, it became clear just how bought-in the community was to Nutt Hill’s rebirth.
“As soon as we started moving dirt—and don’t forget this was a fast-moving project—we realized the only reason this was possible is that just about every vendor we used was right here in town,” says Van Derven. “You’d call them for help with something and every time, I tell you: they’d be there that day.”
With that level of community commitment, the entire project took just six months. The team broke ground to install snowmaking pipes during the last week of May 2025 and opened to the public in December.
Of course, the project was not without the usual glitches and unexpected hiccups, but the community’s speedy response kept things on track.
For example, when the team learned their snowmaking system (pump station, new pipes, hydrants, two new portable snow guns and a fixed gun on the tubing hill) wouldn’t work with the city water system, area businesses, engineers, local contractors, the city, and snowmaking supplier TechnoAlpin worked together to help solve the issue. That involved drilling a new well, equipped with a heavy-duty 15-horsepower electric motor capable of delivering 200 gallons of water per minute.
When they realized they needed a quieter (and more expensive) PistenBully, one “fell into our laps,” Stubbs says. (Read: an anonymous benefactor made it happen.)
That kind of esprit de corps spread well beyond the business owners to many of the town’s residents as well.
“When people would walk up and look at what we were doing [during construction], it wasn’t a case of, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’” Stubbs recalls. “Every time it was, ‘What can we do to help?’ Local folks, all ages, sizes, and shapes, were carrying pipe, clearing areas, and helping any way they could.”
The city of Plymouth, which still owns the property, is pledging $12,000 a year for five years to help cover operating expenses.
Opening Day
On Dec. 15, 2025, they were ready to open. The hill was fully staffed by an excited team and locals showed up in force. The weather cooperated with the snowmaking needs and everyone was thrilled.
The Hallmark movie would have those first days full of soft, fluffy snow and hot cocoa by the lodge, with the entire operation humming along smoothly. Reality, though, was a bit different.
“Ski hills are challenging,” Van Derven says. “It wasn’t all kumbaya.”
There was the actual usage of the equipment in real time to adapt to, from running the snowmaking pumps to little issues that arose across the hill while operating the conveyor lift and other systems for the first time. One example: The ticket printer didn’t work, so for the first nine days, staff were hand-writing tickets with sharpies.
The challenges that arose were met head-on by “a great mix of trained staff and trained volunteers that came from the community, all with the same vision of success in mind,” says Stubbs.
In the end, what mattered was that the hill bubbled back to life as the townsfolk turned out.
“It was pretty magical,” recalls Stubbs. “You look out and see everyone out there using it and loving it, and I have to say, that’s pretty cool.”
Going Forward
The Cheese Capital Winter Park board still meets regularly over breakfast. Now that they’ve successfully funded, built, and operated for a first season, they are looking toward the future. Their goal is to create the kind of lasting culture where the kids around today’s firepit are the ones running Nutt Hill 50 years from now.
They plan to keep prices for lift tickets, tubing, and season passes affordable—and also potentially add things like events, group outings, music on the hill, and other special touches. They also want to look at extending the length of the tubing runs, to amp up the fun and perhaps provide a revenue boost.
And while they have no plans for a big summer operation, they will explore the idea of renting out the chalet for parties and private events.
When folks congratulate the board for what they’ve done, Stubbs is quick to point out that it’s not about just them. “We have a passion for skiing and community involvement, and so does our community,” he says. “With Nutt Hill, everyone wins.”
