Snowboarding begins: the Snurfer and the first boards.

Two firsts, two meanings

The two earliest boards in the sources were made two years apart, and each is "first" in a different sense. Tom Sims's board of 1963 was built first. Sherman Poppen's Snurfer of 1965 was the first on the market in North America: The Canadian Encyclopedia calls it the earliest marketed snowboarding device in North America, and the International Skiing History Association (ISHA) tells the same story of its licensing and sales. Both statements are true, and this site does not treat either man as the inventor.

Britannica, seen only in a search summary because its pages refused access, is reported to say snowboarding draws on skiing, surfing and skateboarding and emerged in the 1960s and 1970s; that framing is unconfirmed.

Tom Sims and the 1963 board

The Santa Barbara Independent's 2012 obituary gives Tom Sims's birth as 6 December 1950 in Los Angeles. It says that in 1963, in his junior-high woodshop class, he built a "skateboard for the snow", a board now on display at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Museum in Vail. The obituary says he founded the company SIMS in 1976, became world champion snowboarder in 1983, and died in Santa Barbara on 12 September 2012.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard's 2012 tribute, seen only in a search summary because its site refused access, is reported to credit Sims with the first metal edges, the first high-back bindings and the first women's-specific snowboard. Those are firsts claimed for a maker, not confirmed by any independent source read for this site.

Sherman Poppen and the Snurfer

ISHA's obituary of Sherman Poppen, in its Skiing History "Lives" series, tells the Snurfer's story:

• Poppen made it on Christmas Day 1965 by bolting together a pair of children's skis for his daughters.
• He applied for a patent in March 1966 and licensed the Snurfer to Brunswick Corp., which had made bowling equipment in Muskegon, Michigan, since 1905.
• Some 750,000 Snurfers were sold by Brunswick and Jem Corp. over the next two decades.
• Brunswick sponsored an annual Snurfer-racing championship in Muskegon from 1968.
• Poppen was inducted into the Snowboarding Hall of Fame in 1995 and died on 31 July 2019, aged 89.

A Smithsonian National Museum of American History story, seen only in a search summary because the page refused access, is reported to say that Poppen's wife, Nancy, coined the name from "snow" and "surfer". That is unconfirmed.

Dimitrije Milovich and Winterstick

In Utah, a student-written history in the University of Utah's Utah Communication History Encyclopedia (Stephen Konkler, 2017) says that by 1971 Dimitrije Milovich held patents and had opened a Winterstick shop in Salt Lake City, that a Winterstick advertisement ran in Newsweek in March 1975, and that he closed his Winterstick stores in 1982. It is a student source and is treated here as unconfirmed.

The dates around Winterstick are not settled. Search summaries of a 2003 Deseret News timeline and a 2023 Standard-Examiner article give Milovich's first "snow surfboard" patent as 1971, 1972 or 1974, and Winterstick's founding as the 1975 to 1976 season or 1976. No patent record was read, so none of those dates is confirmed. The same Deseret News summary names Bob Webber (also spelled Weber) as receiving a "skiboard" patent in 1972 that he later sold to Jake Burton Carpenter; that too is unconfirmed.

Jake Burton Carpenter and Burton

ISHA's obituary of Poppen says Jake Burton Carpenter founded Burton Snowboards in 1977, that he had Snurfed as a child and raced in Brunswick-sponsored events, and quotes him saying the Snurfer inspired him. Search summaries of a Middlebury Campus article and of Wikipedia give Carpenter's birth as 29 April 1954 in New York City and his death as 20 November 2019 in Burlington, Vermont, and say he began making boards in Londonderry, Vermont, in 1977. Those biographical dates come only from summaries and are unconfirmed.

Early dates at a glance

Company founding dates here are history, not recommendations; this site names no board or brand to buy. How the new boards found their way onto ski areas, into competitions and finally into the Olympics is on snowboarding joins the mountain, and the halfpipe on freestyle and halfpipe. Snowboarding as FIS organises it today is on snowboard.