Snurfing originated in Michigan, USA, in 1965, when inventor Sherman Poppen’s daughter Wendy wanted to surf during a snowstorm. Poppen joined two skis side-by-side and added a rope at the front to hold on to.
His wife Nancy combined the two words snow and surf and called it the Snurfer. Six months later Poppen sold his patented invention – by now a monoski, wider and shorter than his original pair of skis lashed together – to sporting equipment giant The Brunswick Corporation. It was an instant hit.
From 1968 through the late 1970s, snurfer racing competitions were held in Michigan, with more than 200 spectators watching a snurfing championship in 1968. Brunswick discontinued production in 1972, but the JEM Corporation took it on and continued manufacture of the Snurfer until the early 1980s.
Other enthusiasts warmed to Poppen’s idea and created new designs, but they were slow to catch on with riders keen to use only genuine Snurfer boards. Eventually though, in the 70s, competitive snurfer Jake Burton designed his new ‘snurfboard’, ditching the rope and adding fixed bindings where Poppen had only anti-skid blocks. He turned his house into a factory and Burton Boards was born, remaining the biggest snowboarding brand to this day.
Ironically, if Poppen hadn’t been so determined to protect the Snurfing name, we might still be riding ‘snurfboards’ today.
Years later Poppen told a magazine: “Burton was calling his board a Snurfboard and mine was a Snurfer, and I didn’t like him using my name, so I hired an attorney to tell him that, hey, that name is trademarked. I wish I hadn’t done that now, because that’s when the sport became snowboarding. He couldn’t use the word Snurfer or Snurf anywhere in his stuff so he called it the Burton Snowboard and that kicked off the whole sport.”
Poppen himself took up snowboarding at the age of 67. He has been recognised by the community as the grandfather of the sport and was inducted into the Snowboarding Hall of Fame in 1995.
