For most visitors, Killington is synonymous with skiing. Long the most popular ski resort in the East, the mountain has more than enough terrain to challenge most skiers for a week. The peak of Mount Killington has always fascinated people. In 1763, Reverend Samuel Peters climbed to its summit and christened the area around it Verde-Mont after the lush green mountains all around.

Its history as a resort, however, starts in the 1950s, when 25-year-old entrepreneur Preston Lee Smith identified the mountain’s location and amazing views (which reach to Maine on a clear day) as the perfect spot to realize his dream for a skiing empire. Opening Killington in 1958, Smith expanded ambitiously, opening lift after lift on neighboring peaks and making it one of the first mountains to install snowmaking equipment to extend the season. (It’s still known as the first resort to open and last to close each year.)

In subsequent years, Killington became a leader in the conglomeration that consumed many of the resorts in New England. The mountain’s size and popularity has led to runaway development on its flank—with the long, twisting Killington Road now a very un-Vermont stretch of hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs extending up to the summit. For some, it’s a welcome bit of civilization (and fun) in the midst of the too-cutesy towns around it; for others it’s a garish display better off in New Hampshire (which might explain why some Killington residents actually voted to secede from Vermont a few years ago and join its neighboring state to the east).

In recent years, Killington has become more and more crowded, giving it the nickname in some circles of “Beast of the East.” For the sheer difficulty and exhilaration of its terrain, however, it is without equal east of the Rockies, leading skiers to return year after year to test themselves on its slopes.