The History of the Snowmobile has Many Starting Points

The history of the snowmobile is a fascinating story.  It starts in 1923 when inventor and outdoorsman Carl Eliason of Wisconsin built his “snow machine” by hand and the prototype for the modern snowmobile was on the map. It used a wooden toboggan as the body, outfitted with skis and a front-mounted liquid cooled 2.5 horsepower engine, a bit undersized by today’s standards, to say the least!  Eliason was awarded a patent in 1927 and began to mass produce his machine for commercial sale.  

During the next 3 decades more than a dozen other predecessors to the modern snowmobile were invented and patented.  Some were innovative adaptations of existing machines, such as modified Model T Ford’s that had their undercarriage removed, replaced by skis and a rubber track.  One of the earliest versions was crafted by a Ford dealer in New Hampshire by the name of Virgil White, the first to use the term “snowmobile” to describe his machine.  These converted autos were sometimes used in northern regions by rural mail carriers to make their deliveries.  

A major breakthrough in the history of the snowmobile came in 1958.  That year Joseph Bombardier introduced what most consider the first truly modern snow machine, a one-person sled with an open cockpit.  He called his invention the Ski-Doo and started commercial production in Canada in 1960 and the U.S. in 1962.  Bombardier had been tinkering with large snow machines since the late 1920’s, producing such models as the B-7 which had an enclosed seating area and a capacity of 7, and the 12-person B-12.  In the mid-1950’s gas-powered engines became lighter and more efficient paving the way for the invention of the personal snow craft.  

At about the same time, brothers Allen and Edgar Hetteen and business partner David Johnson of Minnesota were making farm equipment.  Johnson produced a snow craft and at first was chastised by the Hetteens for diverging from his focus on farm machinery.  After several versions were produced and improved upon the partners were convinced and they began a separate company called Polaris Industries, an important name in the history of the snowmobile.  In the 1960’s and 70’s hundreds of companies started making snowmobiles. 

Most of these manufacturers were already producing outboard motors or motorcycles and their snow machines were adaptations.  In the mid-70’s, the gasoline crisis and recession wiped out most of the companies while the survivors were bought up by the largest of the remaining snowmobile makers.  The best year for sales in the history of the snowmobile was 1997 when 260,000 machines were sold.  Numbers have been up and down since then, though sales in recent years have been quite robust.  New innovations and better technology keep adding chapters to the ongoing history of the snowmobile.