March 18, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the sport of Snowboarding skyrocketed when a young East Coast college graduate made some innovative designs that have lasted to this very day. Here’s our own Greg Hengler to tell us the story of Jake Burton and the sport that became a worldwide phenomenon.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The sport of
snowboarding skyrocketed when a young East Coast college graduate made
some innovative designs that have lasted to this very day.
Here's Greg Hangler to tell us the story of Jake
Burton and the sport that became of worldwide phenomena. Shad White,
(00:32):
pull the call, show, Oh my lord, how perfect can
you possibly land?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Tell them? Twist talk sixty, shadhit, want more hit? Will
it be enough? Hot stock chalk perfect? That is the
run that he needed and he put it down and
it's can return the joy a Shote Light take the call.
(01:01):
Snowboarding is now a well established sport and has come
in leafs and bounds. What is the new board? With
its own culture, superstars and equipment. Competitions and events have
become international staples. Snowboarding has evolved into different styles including
alpine racing, freestyle, free riding, backcountry, and more. But where
(01:22):
did it all begin? It began in nineteen sixty five
with the snurfer. The snurfer was invented by a Muskegon,
Michigan engineer named Sherman Poppin. This contraption was a monoski
(01:43):
two skis strapped together and ridden with both feet facing
forward in the direction in which you are traveling. Like
a skateboard or a surfboard, it had no binding, and
like a sled, it had a rope attached to the
nose to help with the steering. Ironically, skateboarding was birthed
in a similar spirit when in the nineteen fifties kids
(02:06):
attached roller skate wheels to small boards that they steered
by shifting their weight. Here's Sherman Poppin discussing the birth
of his snurfer.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I developed the snurfer on Christmas Day nineteen sixty five
as a toy for my kids, and the motivation was
I lived on a shorelake Michigan and always wished I
could surf, but we never really had good waves. Anyway,
I had these old Kresky skis and I put them
together and we started riding perpendicular to the direction of travel,
(02:41):
which is part of the patent. It turned out that
it was an absolute blast, and my wife watched us
through the window and she said, you know, that is
really a fun thing. And that night she dreamed up
the name snurfer, which is a contraction where it snowed
and surf. There was my dad who was out playing
(03:04):
with us in the dunes who put the teather on.
He'd fall down, the board would go down the hill,
and he says, this is stupid, and I said, I agree.
So the teather got on two purposes. One you could
just hang on to it so you wouldn't lose the
board when you fell off. The other thing was you
could sort of pull on it and swing it and
literally steer. The motion's exactly the same as riding on
(03:25):
the board today.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Poppin patented the snurfer in nineteen sixty six, and in
February nineteen sixty eight he began holding snowsurfing competitions at
a Michigan ski resort every winter that attracted enthusiasts from
all over the country. A year after Poppin patented the snurfer,
in Cedarhurst, New York, the life of thirteen year old
(03:52):
Jake Burton Carpenter started to unravel. Jake's older brother, George
was killed in Vietnam, and a few years later his
mother died as well. Jake even ended up getting expelled
from his boarding school. Here's Jake Burton.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
I mean, I was a wise and when I was
young and to a fault, and when I got kicked
out of Brooks was a school and I went up
to see the head master, who was a headmaster when
my father was there and when my brother was there.
It was brutal. I mean, my dad made me get
in the car, go five hours see this guy, you know,
for a five minute conversation, and then a long drive home.
(04:32):
And that is when I decided to turn my life
around and start applying myself to whatever.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
The hell I did.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
In nineteen sixty eight, the fourteen year old Burton was
one of the thousands of kids who purchased a snurfer
for ten bucks and was hooked. It became such an
obsession that the ten years and one hundred prototypes later,
Jake and Carpenter produced the Burton back Hill, one of
the first snowboards. He built with his sabersaw out of
(05:07):
his apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City.
As for the name of his board, Jake figured Burton
was a better brand name than Carpenter. Fresh out of
college with a degree in economics from NYU, Jake traveled
with his snowboard creation to Poppins's National Snurfing Championship in Muskegon,
(05:31):
Michigan in nineteen seventy nine. There were protests about Jake
entering a non snurfer board, so a modified open division
was created and was won by Jake as the sole entrant.
That race was considered the first competition for snowboards and
is the start of what we now know as competitive snowboarding.
(05:55):
Here's Poppins.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
But we had our contests the college kids. This is
sort of like a hoolie hoop on college as they
just took it over because it would run on one
or two three inches of snow. And there's a little
ski area in Michigan North the Grand Rapids called Pando
and Panda. Let let us have one offbeat chair for
(06:17):
five hours when we run our contests and downhill and slalom.
And that's the way it was. And in nineteen seventy nine,
fourteen years later, Jake showed up at one of our
downhill slalom things and he had snurfers, but he'd put
a little piece of inner two over to slip your
(06:38):
surrel under. That's how all got started. That was the beginning,
and he on the East coast and Tom Simms on
the West Coast were developing him at the same time.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
In an interview with Snowboarder magazine, Burton paid full respect
to his West Coast competition, stating without Tom Simms to
compete with in every sense and vice versa, snowboarding wouldn't
be where it is today. Here's Jake Burton being interviewed
in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
How'd you get into it?
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Well, a company called brunch Of Corporation used to make
something called a snurf for a long time ago, and
I wrote those for about the last ten years and
nobody really improved it. And living back East and just
sort of getting flustered with that particular bors, just decided
to start making something on my own.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
In nineteen seventy seven, when Burton began making his own boards,
he thought he would get rich quickly. He opened Burton
Boards in southern Vermont. He had a logo contest and
his sister in law won five bucks for coming up
with the Mountain logo that Burton still uses to this
very day. Here's what Burton told Ink magazine. I don't
(07:54):
know if I really understood supply and demand. People were
like a skateboard for the no. I was a punky kid,
and my dad, who was always in my corner, said
that I never finished anything that was it. I wanted
to prove him wrong. But in the second year of
Burton's snowboarding company, things went from bad to worse. Here's Burton.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
I mean. I was like Willie Lohman, and I was
a traveling salesman, and I would load up my car.
It was a Volvo wagon at the time. And I
remember once going out with thirty eight snowboards, and I
drove around New York State and visited dealers, and I
went out with thirty eight and I came home with
forty because one guy had given me two back.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Burton decided to stop worrying about immediate profitability and focused
instead on cultivating the sport of snowboarding itself. In nineteen
ninety one, he began sponsoring the world's best snowboarders, and,
like the Steinway piano company, who uses the feedback from
sponsored penists to improve their product, Burton demanded honest feedback
(08:59):
from his sponsored athletes in order to better his design.
Burton also began marketing his sport to the ski resorts,
who are almost unanimous and blacklisting the snowboard from its slopes.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And you've been listening to Greg Hangler, and you've been
hearing from Jake Burton himself telling the story of this
sport called snowboarding, which started with Burton just while making
the boards himself Burton Boards, and then trying to sell
them and having a hard time. So instead he sold
the sport, cultivated critics, adoption, and ultimately worldwide use. But
(09:36):
so far as we're hearing in the story, times were tough.
The resorts blacklisted snowboarding, and while he was having a
hard time traveling around the country selling him out of
his car. When we come back more of the story
of Jake Burton, it's also a heck of an American
dreamer story. The story of Jake Burton continues here on
(09:57):
our American story, and we continue with our American stories.
The last segment ended with Jake Burton's decision to Puty's product,
the snowboard, on pause and focus instead on cultivating the
(10:21):
sport itself. Let's return to our own Greg Hangler.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Here's Steve Hayes Burton Team Ryder from nineteen eighty four
to nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 6 (10:32):
One of the key things.
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I think that besides Burton and going from resort to
resort and working with the marketing managers and general managers
of the resorts was actually Eastern Edge was one of
the magazines here that had a blacklist, and they would
put every resort that didn't allow snowboarding on the blacklist.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Here's editor of Snowboarder magazine, Pat Bridges.
Speaker 8 (10:57):
Skiing and snowboarding in the eighties. It was a scary place.
Lawyers ruled the day, and introducing something new to that
environment was not welcome. And he took it upon himself
as a challenge and he literally did the leg work
when door to door and sold our sport. You know, granted,
(11:19):
you get to question the motivations, be like, yeah, well
he's motivated by money, he wants to cret a sport,
this and the other thing. Well, regardless of this motivations,
twenty years later, there's ten million snowboarders in the United
States who reaped the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You know, the daunting task of selling the sport of
snowboarding to the ski resort gatekeepers cannot be exaggerated. Here's
a news report from nineteen eighty five exemplifying the herculean
task Burton was up against.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
This is what all the fuss is about. It's like snowsurfing.
It's been around for almost a decade in the United
States and now it's becoming the trendy thing to do
on our local ski slopes. But the operators of the
hills want them off the skiers.
Speaker 10 (12:06):
We try and keep them separated, but the snowboards come
down the slopes and they'll go right in between the
skiers and we'll kick them off, and they'll just lip
us off. And they're dangerous because if one of these
skateboards or skiboards whatever they're called hit a person, they'd
break their leg because they're just like a missile. And
(12:28):
most of them have no brakes on them. So nobody
is allowing them on any of the mountains around.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
But where there's a will, there's always a way. Ski
hill operators refuse to let anyone with a snowboard onto
the chair lift, so they have to hike to the
top of the mountain and then find a secluded ski
trail where they won't get caught. The ski patrol says
it's got its hands full.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
Quite a lot of them are uncooperative, smart Alex. You know,
you go up in a coroach them in a very calm,
collect manner, and they tend to lip you off. He
asked them very nicely to leave, that they're endangering the
public and possibly themselves, and they swear at you. They
tell you to get lost, mind your own business. So
(13:14):
it's quite a problem for us.
Speaker 10 (13:15):
Really, do you.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
See any compromise in the future at all.
Speaker 11 (13:19):
No, No, Skiing is becoming more and more popular, and
if these boards become more and more popular, it's going
to be more hassles, more confrontation. So we just like
to say that we don't want them at all.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Contrary to what ski patrol officers said the ski industry
was declining, it would be Jake Burton who would open
both the chairlifts to the snowboarding community while simultaneously rescuing
a flailing ski industry that was dead set on destroying
the sport he founded. One by one, the number of
(13:53):
ski resorts blacklisting snowboarders got shorter. Here again is Steve
Hayes and Jake Burton.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Over time marketing managers said, you know, I believe Killington
was one of the last holdouts in Vermont to allow
snowboarding and Killington marketing manager saw the name on a
blacklist and they're like, jeez, we can't have that. And actually,
as the sports started to grow, the bottom line was
these general managers could not be turned away dollars. There
(14:22):
was a little slump in the ski industry and this
was one answer to fill in some of the voids
that those guys were looking for extra revenue.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
So it was very you know, it took a while
before we got onto resorts, and that was clearly a huge,
you know move in terms of growing whole thing and
sort of making it bigger, but it took a long
time just to get there.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
As the sport grew, so did Burton's company. Burton has
been one of the world's largest snowboard and snowboarding equipment
manufacturers since the late nineteen eighties, and Burton remains the
pinnacle of sponsorship for snowboarders. Here's professional snowboarder Trevor Andrew Oh.
Speaker 13 (15:02):
Jack is the man like he's one of the ralest people.
You know, the riders to him, it seems like I've
always he's just considered them family and he's just since
day one. You know, he's not the typical like owner
of a huge company like that that you would expect.
You know, he totally is like riding with you and
(15:22):
just as stoked as everybody else about it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
In nineteen ninety eight, less than a decade after Time
magazine called snowboarding the worst new sport, the International Olympic
Committee sought it and the youthful audience had promised. Thanks
to Burton, snowboarding is now one of the most watched
events at the Winter Olympics. Here's professional snowboarder in Olympic
(15:48):
gold and silver medalist Hannah Teter.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You defend coming down ing.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Fight right now.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It just wants the best product and that's what we
all want.
Speaker 10 (16:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's why Burton's like the rider driven company is because
they're all about input from us.
Speaker 10 (16:08):
You know. They wanted to look good, but they wanted
to function more so.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's nice to have a boss.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Like not many people get nice bosses, but we do.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Here's three time Olympic gold medalist Sean White.
Speaker 14 (16:23):
I don't know, I've never really felt like it he
was a boss ever. I don't know, it's been one
of those things where he's just like socially, I don't
know if you've met him or not, but he's just
like this really mel little fun guy. He's like, you know,
I think the first thing when we were hanging out,
he made some joke about what some woman was wearing,
you know what I mean, and I was still blown
away by it that it caught me so off guard.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
It like, this guy rules like he's all taught and
much as progress since Burton initiated improvements to the snurfer,
but the raw authenticity that formed the heart of the
sport still remains. Here's Burton.
Speaker 12 (16:58):
Nobody's stopping snow borders or you know, from looking like
NASCAR drivers, you know, and putting patches all over and
celindary you know, themselves to everybody. I mean, that's not
what people want to see.
Speaker 14 (17:09):
And that's kind of good.
Speaker 12 (17:10):
I mean, there is this sort of sense of kuth
that's associated with I think all board sports that we
don't want to lose, and I think that that might
keep things down a little bit, a little bit smaller.
Hopefully it'll just sort of keep it seen.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
During his long tenure as one of snowboarding's true patriarchs,
Jake's net worth is upwards of one hundred million dollars.
Ten years after Jake founded Burton Snowboards, fewer than seven
percent of ski resorts even allowed snowboarding, but today it's
hard to find one that doesn't. Burton's Burlington Vermont company,
(17:51):
which he co owns with his wife Donna, remains the
industry leader, with five international offices and eight hundred in
four five employees. Not even Burton himself could have predicted
this much success.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I had no idea that what would happen was snowbrading.
I mean, I saw a sport, but I did not
see Sean White on the cover of Rolling Stone twice,
or snowboarding me in the Olympics, or the stuff that's happened.
And it's been the athletes that have made it happen,
and we've facilitated it, but it's been exceeded. I wouldn't
(18:28):
even say dreams because I never dreamt anything on the
level that were on now.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and you were hearing Jake
Burton's voice. He passed in twenty nineteen, but his legacy
lives on, and what he had done was essentially create
his own sport by merely adopting and improving the snurfer.
And then there was just that passion to see the
(18:54):
thing happen. It was more than money, It was more
than a dream. Even in the end, it was obstinates
and just a grit and a determination to see this
sport happen. As Jake Burton said, I saw a sport.
What I didn't see was Shaun White on the cover
of Rolling Stone twice, or snowboarding being an Olympic sport
(19:17):
only in America. Sometimes can we not even dream the
dreams that become our life. The story of Jake Burton
here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. The sport of
snowboarding skyrocketed when a young East Coast college graduate made
some innovative designs that have lasted to this very day.
Here's Greg Hangler to tell us the story of Jake
Burton and the sport that became of worldwide phenomena. Shad White,
(00:32):
pull the call, show, Oh my lord, how perfect can
you possibly land?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Tell them? Twist talk sixty, shadhit, want more hit? Will
it be enough? Hot stock chalk perfect? That is the
run that he needed and he put it down and
it's can return the joy a Shote Light take the call.
(01:01):
Snowboarding is now a well established sport and has come
in leafs and bounds. What is the new board? With
its own culture, superstars and equipment. Competitions and events have
become international staples. Snowboarding has evolved into different styles including
alpine racing, freestyle, free riding, backcountry, and more. But where
(01:22):
did it all begin? It began in nineteen sixty five
with the snurfer. The snurfer was invented by a Muskegon,
Michigan engineer named Sherman Poppin. This contraption was a monoski
(01:43):
two skis strapped together and ridden with both feet facing
forward in the direction in which you are traveling. Like
a skateboard or a surfboard, it had no binding, and
like a sled, it had a rope attached to the
nose to help with the steering. Ironically, skateboarding was birthed
in a similar spirit when in the nineteen fifties kids
(02:06):
attached roller skate wheels to small boards that they steered
by shifting their weight. Here's Sherman Poppin discussing the birth
of his snurfer.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I developed the snurfer on Christmas Day nineteen sixty five
as a toy for my kids, and the motivation was
I lived on a shorelake Michigan and always wished I
could surf, but we never really had good waves. Anyway,
I had these old Kresky skis and I put them
together and we started riding perpendicular to the direction of travel,
(02:41):
which is part of the patent. It turned out that
it was an absolute blast, and my wife watched us
through the window and she said, you know, that is
really a fun thing. And that night she dreamed up
the name snurfer, which is a contraction where it snowed
and surf. There was my dad who was out playing
(03:04):
with us in the dunes who put the teather on.
He'd fall down, the board would go down the hill,
and he says, this is stupid, and I said, I agree.
So the teather got on two purposes. One you could
just hang on to it so you wouldn't lose the
board when you fell off. The other thing was you
could sort of pull on it and swing it and
literally steer. The motion's exactly the same as riding on
(03:25):
the board today.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Poppin patented the snurfer in nineteen sixty six, and in
February nineteen sixty eight he began holding snowsurfing competitions at
a Michigan ski resort every winter that attracted enthusiasts from
all over the country. A year after Poppin patented the snurfer,
in Cedarhurst, New York, the life of thirteen year old
(03:52):
Jake Burton Carpenter started to unravel. Jake's older brother, George
was killed in Vietnam, and a few years later his
mother died as well. Jake even ended up getting expelled
from his boarding school. Here's Jake Burton.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
I mean, I was a wise and when I was
young and to a fault, and when I got kicked
out of Brooks was a school and I went up
to see the head master, who was a headmaster when
my father was there and when my brother was there.
It was brutal. I mean, my dad made me get
in the car, go five hours see this guy, you know,
for a five minute conversation, and then a long drive home.
(04:32):
And that is when I decided to turn my life
around and start applying myself to whatever.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
The hell I did.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
In nineteen sixty eight, the fourteen year old Burton was
one of the thousands of kids who purchased a snurfer
for ten bucks and was hooked. It became such an
obsession that the ten years and one hundred prototypes later,
Jake and Carpenter produced the Burton back Hill, one of
the first snowboards. He built with his sabersaw out of
(05:07):
his apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City.
As for the name of his board, Jake figured Burton
was a better brand name than Carpenter. Fresh out of
college with a degree in economics from NYU, Jake traveled
with his snowboard creation to Poppins's National Snurfing Championship in Muskegon,
(05:31):
Michigan in nineteen seventy nine. There were protests about Jake
entering a non snurfer board, so a modified open division
was created and was won by Jake as the sole entrant.
That race was considered the first competition for snowboards and
is the start of what we now know as competitive snowboarding.
(05:55):
Here's Poppins.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
But we had our contests the college kids. This is
sort of like a hoolie hoop on college as they
just took it over because it would run on one
or two three inches of snow. And there's a little
ski area in Michigan North the Grand Rapids called Pando
and Panda. Let let us have one offbeat chair for
(06:17):
five hours when we run our contests and downhill and slalom.
And that's the way it was. And in nineteen seventy nine,
fourteen years later, Jake showed up at one of our
downhill slalom things and he had snurfers, but he'd put
a little piece of inner two over to slip your
(06:38):
surrel under. That's how all got started. That was the beginning,
and he on the East coast and Tom Simms on
the West Coast were developing him at the same time.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
In an interview with Snowboarder magazine, Burton paid full respect
to his West Coast competition, stating without Tom Simms to
compete with in every sense and vice versa, snowboarding wouldn't
be where it is today. Here's Jake Burton being interviewed
in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
How'd you get into it?
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Well, a company called brunch Of Corporation used to make
something called a snurf for a long time ago, and
I wrote those for about the last ten years and
nobody really improved it. And living back East and just
sort of getting flustered with that particular bors, just decided
to start making something on my own.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
In nineteen seventy seven, when Burton began making his own boards,
he thought he would get rich quickly. He opened Burton
Boards in southern Vermont. He had a logo contest and
his sister in law won five bucks for coming up
with the Mountain logo that Burton still uses to this
very day. Here's what Burton told Ink magazine. I don't
(07:54):
know if I really understood supply and demand. People were
like a skateboard for the no. I was a punky kid,
and my dad, who was always in my corner, said
that I never finished anything that was it. I wanted
to prove him wrong. But in the second year of
Burton's snowboarding company, things went from bad to worse. Here's Burton.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
I mean. I was like Willie Lohman, and I was
a traveling salesman, and I would load up my car.
It was a Volvo wagon at the time. And I
remember once going out with thirty eight snowboards, and I
drove around New York State and visited dealers, and I
went out with thirty eight and I came home with
forty because one guy had given me two back.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Burton decided to stop worrying about immediate profitability and focused
instead on cultivating the sport of snowboarding itself. In nineteen
ninety one, he began sponsoring the world's best snowboarders, and,
like the Steinway piano company, who uses the feedback from
sponsored penists to improve their product, Burton demanded honest feedback
(08:59):
from his sponsored athletes in order to better his design.
Burton also began marketing his sport to the ski resorts,
who are almost unanimous and blacklisting the snowboard from its slopes.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And you've been listening to Greg Hangler, and you've been
hearing from Jake Burton himself telling the story of this
sport called snowboarding, which started with Burton just while making
the boards himself Burton Boards, and then trying to sell
them and having a hard time. So instead he sold
the sport, cultivated critics, adoption, and ultimately worldwide use. But
(09:36):
so far as we're hearing in the story, times were tough.
The resorts blacklisted snowboarding, and while he was having a
hard time traveling around the country selling him out of
his car. When we come back more of the story
of Jake Burton, it's also a heck of an American
dreamer story. The story of Jake Burton continues here on
(09:57):
our American story, and we continue with our American stories.
The last segment ended with Jake Burton's decision to Puty's product,
the snowboard, on pause and focus instead on cultivating the
(10:21):
sport itself. Let's return to our own Greg Hangler.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Here's Steve Hayes Burton Team Ryder from nineteen eighty four
to nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 6 (10:32):
One of the key things.
Speaker 7 (10:34):
I think that besides Burton and going from resort to
resort and working with the marketing managers and general managers
of the resorts was actually Eastern Edge was one of
the magazines here that had a blacklist, and they would
put every resort that didn't allow snowboarding on the blacklist.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Here's editor of Snowboarder magazine, Pat Bridges.
Speaker 8 (10:57):
Skiing and snowboarding in the eighties. It was a scary place.
Lawyers ruled the day, and introducing something new to that
environment was not welcome. And he took it upon himself
as a challenge and he literally did the leg work
when door to door and sold our sport. You know, granted,
(11:19):
you get to question the motivations, be like, yeah, well
he's motivated by money, he wants to cret a sport,
this and the other thing. Well, regardless of this motivations,
twenty years later, there's ten million snowboarders in the United
States who reaped the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You know, the daunting task of selling the sport of
snowboarding to the ski resort gatekeepers cannot be exaggerated. Here's
a news report from nineteen eighty five exemplifying the herculean
task Burton was up against.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
This is what all the fuss is about. It's like snowsurfing.
It's been around for almost a decade in the United
States and now it's becoming the trendy thing to do
on our local ski slopes. But the operators of the
hills want them off the skiers.
Speaker 10 (12:06):
We try and keep them separated, but the snowboards come
down the slopes and they'll go right in between the
skiers and we'll kick them off, and they'll just lip
us off. And they're dangerous because if one of these
skateboards or skiboards whatever they're called hit a person, they'd
break their leg because they're just like a missile. And
(12:28):
most of them have no brakes on them. So nobody
is allowing them on any of the mountains around.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
But where there's a will, there's always a way. Ski
hill operators refuse to let anyone with a snowboard onto
the chair lift, so they have to hike to the
top of the mountain and then find a secluded ski
trail where they won't get caught. The ski patrol says
it's got its hands full.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
Quite a lot of them are uncooperative, smart Alex. You know,
you go up in a coroach them in a very calm,
collect manner, and they tend to lip you off. He
asked them very nicely to leave, that they're endangering the
public and possibly themselves, and they swear at you. They
tell you to get lost, mind your own business. So
(13:14):
it's quite a problem for us.
Speaker 10 (13:15):
Really, do you.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
See any compromise in the future at all.
Speaker 11 (13:19):
No, No, Skiing is becoming more and more popular, and
if these boards become more and more popular, it's going
to be more hassles, more confrontation. So we just like
to say that we don't want them at all.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Contrary to what ski patrol officers said the ski industry
was declining, it would be Jake Burton who would open
both the chairlifts to the snowboarding community while simultaneously rescuing
a flailing ski industry that was dead set on destroying
the sport he founded. One by one, the number of
(13:53):
ski resorts blacklisting snowboarders got shorter. Here again is Steve
Hayes and Jake Burton.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Over time marketing managers said, you know, I believe Killington
was one of the last holdouts in Vermont to allow
snowboarding and Killington marketing manager saw the name on a
blacklist and they're like, jeez, we can't have that. And actually,
as the sports started to grow, the bottom line was
these general managers could not be turned away dollars. There
(14:22):
was a little slump in the ski industry and this
was one answer to fill in some of the voids
that those guys were looking for extra revenue.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
So it was very you know, it took a while
before we got onto resorts, and that was clearly a huge,
you know move in terms of growing whole thing and
sort of making it bigger, but it took a long
time just to get there.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
As the sport grew, so did Burton's company. Burton has
been one of the world's largest snowboard and snowboarding equipment
manufacturers since the late nineteen eighties, and Burton remains the
pinnacle of sponsorship for snowboarders. Here's professional snowboarder Trevor Andrew Oh.
Speaker 13 (15:02):
Jack is the man like he's one of the ralest people.
You know, the riders to him, it seems like I've
always he's just considered them family and he's just since
day one. You know, he's not the typical like owner
of a huge company like that that you would expect.
You know, he totally is like riding with you and
(15:22):
just as stoked as everybody else about it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
In nineteen ninety eight, less than a decade after Time
magazine called snowboarding the worst new sport, the International Olympic
Committee sought it and the youthful audience had promised. Thanks
to Burton, snowboarding is now one of the most watched
events at the Winter Olympics. Here's professional snowboarder in Olympic
(15:48):
gold and silver medalist Hannah Teter.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You defend coming down ing.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Fight right now.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It just wants the best product and that's what we
all want.
Speaker 10 (16:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's why Burton's like the rider driven company is because
they're all about input from us.
Speaker 10 (16:08):
You know. They wanted to look good, but they wanted
to function more so.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's nice to have a boss.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Like not many people get nice bosses, but we do.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Here's three time Olympic gold medalist Sean White.
Speaker 14 (16:23):
I don't know, I've never really felt like it he
was a boss ever. I don't know, it's been one
of those things where he's just like socially, I don't
know if you've met him or not, but he's just
like this really mel little fun guy. He's like, you know,
I think the first thing when we were hanging out,
he made some joke about what some woman was wearing,
you know what I mean, and I was still blown
away by it that it caught me so off guard.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
It like, this guy rules like he's all taught and
much as progress since Burton initiated improvements to the snurfer,
but the raw authenticity that formed the heart of the
sport still remains. Here's Burton.
Speaker 12 (16:58):
Nobody's stopping snow borders or you know, from looking like
NASCAR drivers, you know, and putting patches all over and
celindary you know, themselves to everybody. I mean, that's not
what people want to see.
Speaker 14 (17:09):
And that's kind of good.
Speaker 12 (17:10):
I mean, there is this sort of sense of kuth
that's associated with I think all board sports that we
don't want to lose, and I think that that might
keep things down a little bit, a little bit smaller.
Hopefully it'll just sort of keep it seen.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
During his long tenure as one of snowboarding's true patriarchs,
Jake's net worth is upwards of one hundred million dollars.
Ten years after Jake founded Burton Snowboards, fewer than seven
percent of ski resorts even allowed snowboarding, but today it's
hard to find one that doesn't. Burton's Burlington Vermont company,
(17:51):
which he co owns with his wife Donna, remains the
industry leader, with five international offices and eight hundred in
four five employees. Not even Burton himself could have predicted
this much success.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
I had no idea that what would happen was snowbrading.
I mean, I saw a sport, but I did not
see Sean White on the cover of Rolling Stone twice,
or snowboarding me in the Olympics, or the stuff that's happened.
And it's been the athletes that have made it happen,
and we've facilitated it, but it's been exceeded. I wouldn't
(18:28):
even say dreams because I never dreamt anything on the
level that were on now.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and you were hearing Jake
Burton's voice. He passed in twenty nineteen, but his legacy
lives on, and what he had done was essentially create
his own sport by merely adopting and improving the snurfer.
And then there was just that passion to see the
(18:54):
thing happen. It was more than money, It was more
than a dream. Even in the end, it was obstinates
and just a grit and a determination to see this
sport happen. As Jake Burton said, I saw a sport.
What I didn't see was Shaun White on the cover
of Rolling Stone twice, or snowboarding being an Olympic sport
(19:17):
only in America. Sometimes can we not even dream the
dreams that become our life. The story of Jake Burton
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com