Chautauqua–Owensboro’s Premiere Sledding Hill for Decades

Full disclosure--I may have jinxed us all. For weeks leading up to the first major snowfall we've experienced in years, I'd been casually tagging certain sentences with, "...of course, we haven't had any REAL snow around here in years."

Or something like that.

Anyway, if you are a lover of all this, you're welcome. If not, I'm sorry.

But, hey, if you're a big-time sledder or just an amateur like me, the big snowy world just became your winter oyster. With that in mind, I headed out to Chautauqua Park to check out the action on Owensboro's most iconic sledding hill.

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I love this hill. It's perfect for sledding for a number of reasons. For one, look at that slope. That gives the ace tobogganer lots and lots of speed. And two, that speed will only lead you down into a parking lot, not the street. That was an issue for us at WKU when we'd get a big snowfall and slide down Van Meter Hill. We had to be careful or we'd end up on University Boulevard, and that's never good.

But there are no such worries at Chautauqua, where the city KNOWS you're coming to sled and posts an "at your own risk" sign for just such occasions.

Also, Chautauqua has, what I call, "degree of difficulty" slopes. If you don't like that one above, you might like this one.

But, seriously, this is a great hill for sledding. We used to have our moms drive us here to go sledding. And speaking of moms, MY mom used to sled down this hill, too. And that was back in 1940s. So this thing has been a great source of winter entertainment for EIGHT decades.

Enjoy, but, please be careful.