RICHMOND, Vt. — It was 1960 in northern Vermont and Mickey Cochran had a simple plan with an uncommon stipulation. A former schoolteacher, Cochran would buy a house in the country for his growing family, but only if the new home had a pitched slope behind it where he could install a ski lift.

Along with his wife, Ginny, whom he met while skiing, Cochran found the right house and parcel of land for $10,000, and soon there was a rope tow just outside the back door. Educated as a mechanical engineer, Cochran affixed floodlights to adjacent trees and the roof of the two-story home, turning the modest rural hillside into a round-the-clock winter playground.

Like a Vermont version of the movie “Field of Dreams,” if you build and illuminate a place to ski in snow country, people will come from far and wide.

Throughout the 1960s, thousands of local schoolchildren and their parents learned to ski at the Cochran hill, with Mickey and Ginny providing free hands-on instruction. They did not charge to use the 400-foot rope tow either. Everyone was welcome, even in the kitchen of the Cochran home, which served as a warming hut.