If the traditional skateboard longboard goes back to Hawaii in the 50s, surfing back much earlier, skiing back into the nineteenth century, I can’t find incidences in print before the 70s. Historical accounts are often published more recently but have no citation to track down.

In skie magazine, it is noted that the earliest

longboard racing began in January 1861 in the town of Onion Valley. Within a month longboarding had spread 30 miles north to the second-oldest recorded race site in Eureka Bowl. What did longboarding and open miners do to the Native American tradition? What actually happened was the Plumas Ski Club succeeded in doing so. What do athletes need to know about this ski club? For two decades, the Plumas Ski Club has hosted a ski field, in the Eureka Bowl near Johnstown, in the early 1950s. It was home to what was actually a historic longboard site. As a modeern rope-tow area, Eureka Bowl went through the usual small-ski-area-life-and-death struggle while elsewhere in California one-shot longboard revival races intermittendy popped up. During a typical longboard event in 1964, Iongboarder Jerry Burelle proved that longboarding was not just a matter of standing on skis in a sort of toboggan Page 26 Skiing Heritage /Juue2009 Copyrighted material ride — Burelle took on 1964 Olympic medalist Billy Kidd (on modern downhill skis) and beat Kidd to the bottom. After a few years, and with little success, Kidd died — and he survived. No immediate follow-up races were held — but the longboard would not die’ and would not be.

I have trawled the usual newspaper archives without success, so any suggestions before the end of 14 April will be appreciated.