Ski Way, Incline Village, NV

Ski Way is the road that climbs from town to Diamond Peak, and the neighborhood along its switchbacks lives on that mountain's schedule. The hill opened on November 19, 1966 as Ski Incline, designed by Austrian ski-area builder Luggi Foeger and finished four months after ground broke, the first resort in the western United States to install snowmaking. IVGID bought it for the community in 1976 for $1.5 million, and the name changed after an upper-mountain expansion added the black-diamond terrain the new name winks at. Condominiums and planned developments dominate, topping out around 7,240 feet at Tyrolian Village, which makes this the village's most lock-and-leave quarter. Rolling downhill to a chairlift before the Mount Rose Highway crowd reaches town is the entire pitch, and the lake views from the upper bends rival addresses at triple the price. There is a stranger history on the mountainside nearby: the Ponderosa Ranch theme park operated above the neighborhood's lower reaches from 1968 to 2004, a working replica of the Bonanza ranch house where fifteen episodes were filmed and millions of Hoss Burgers were sold. Billionaire David Duffield bought the land in 2004 and quietly closed the gates. Off-season the complexes go still, and a powder morning puts every neighbor on the same uphill road at once. Which building you pick matters more here than which street.