Snowmobile History

People traveled in the snow long before snowmobiles came into existence. One only has to look at the dog sleds found in Alaska. Of course men skied long before snowmobiles too. It should not be surprising then that the first snowmobile featured front skis. It was called the Lombard log Roller and was constructed in Waterville Maine in 1908.

The following year, O.C. Johnson constructed a track-designed machine that had what was described as a "one lunger engine." It was poorly designed, as are most prototypes. At about the same time, a Ford dealer living in the state of New Hampshire by the name of Virgil White created a Model T Ford ski unit conversion so that the car could ride in the snow. He named the invention a snowmobile, and thus a new word was born.

We move on to 1922 now, where a teenager named J. Armand Bombadier created a sleigh that was wind driven. This sleigh, actually a snowmobile, was constructed using a Model T engine. He designed many other snowmobiles.

Two years later, in 1924 a Mr. Earl Eliason created a motored toboggan. It had two skis in front and was steered by the use of ropes. The steel cleated track behind it was powered by a 2 ½ horsepower outboard motor made by Johnson, which was actually front mounted, and liquid cooled. It is the first snowmobile that made use of a jack shaft. He sought a patent for it, and received it and made his machines until 1939. F.W.D. Corporation of Canada purchased the right to make them and continued to do so all the way through to 1960.

1954 heralded the first modern day snowmobiles . Partnered with Edgar and Alan Hetteen in the company Hetteen, Hoist, and Derrick, David Johnson created a snowmobile instead of working on farm equipment that their company manufactured. He named it the Polaris. The partners were very displeased with this machine, and even though they thought it a frivolous machine, they were very surprised when he sold it. Eventually after spending a lot of time servicing his Polaris for the purchaser he persuaded the Hetteen brothers to construct a second Polaris, and call it the Polaris Sno Traveler and used it to pull out the first Polaris. Eventually, in 1957 the partnership began phasing out farm equipment and made sleds instead.

In 1958 the Polaris Company decided to begin a dealer network. The eastern distributor was a man from Yarmouth, Maine named Bob Morrill. The western distributor of Boise, Idaho was named Ray Brandt. Together with Linwood Willard, and Earlan B. Campbell, a well-known bush pilot, hunter and trapper, they tried out the machines in Maine. Because of the differences in the topography surface in Maine, the machine could not work efficiently. In fact, it required that the area it traveled in had to be snowshooed first!

Finally due to the efforts of Earlan Campbell and Bob Morrill, the Polaris Company made the decision that they would test their machines within the Allagash Regions of Northern Maine. Many prototypes were made - all of them improvements - to the various Polaris snowmobiles due to this decision, and thus we have the awesome snowmobiles of today!