Is Cloquet the birthplace of the snowboard?

Reader Kim Matteen spotted a reference to Cloquet in the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine. In its Prologue section, under the heading of "Origins," Max Ufberg writes about the rise of snowboarding from a "goofy" pastime to an Olympics sport.

Vern Wicklund, as the story goes, was messing around with modified sleds when he was a teenager in Cloquet, as early as 1917. In 1939, he and relatives Harvey and Gunnar Burgeson, all now living in the Chicago area, patented what is generally considered the first snowboard.

It's not without some controversy. Most boards in the early days were modified sleds or waterskis, and it's likely that Wicklund wasn't the only kid messing around with getting down a snow-covered hill in a new fashion.

But as the snowboard gained prominence on ski hills across the country, efforts were made to look back on the origins. Many publications have cited Wicklund as a pioneer, but things really cemented in the 2000s, when Burton Snowboards, through a surviving relative, produced the original 1939 patent, one of the sleds, and a film of Wicklund riding one at a country club hill in Oak Park, Illinois in 1939.

Today, the Wicklund story is generally accepted as a definite forerunner to the modern snowboard.

The Sno-Surf was a curved sled with grooved rubber pad footholds, straps for the feet, a rudder, and a rope on the front. A stick was used for steering. The trio tried selling the boards, to no avail, and then World War II intervened. Other inventors came out with versions in the 1960s, including the Snurfer, the first mass-produced snowboard that sold a million units in 1970.

Wicklund died in 1992 in Wisconsin. He was born in Cloquet in 1903, the son of Andrew and Mary (Johnson) Wicklund. He was married to Bernice Bergeson.

Here's a question: How many people here in Carlton County are aware of Wicklund and his contribution to what is now one of the most popular winter pastimes in the world? One of the 1939 boards sits at the Colorado Snowsports Museum, a "holy grail," as one museum board member described it. Maybe we need one at the Carlton County Historical Society.

If you anything to add to this History Mystery or have one of your own, email [email protected] with "history" in the subject line.