History of Skateboarding: Culture Forever Changed

Skateboarding has been around for a long time, but the impact it has left on society and our culture go unnoticed. The invention of the skateboard alone suggests that people have always had the need to have their own unique sport. Overall, skateboarding has had a major influence on the way people dress, talk, and act. From the past to the present, it has increasingly changed over the years and will continue to change with the new technology. So, why was skateboarding invented? 

Even though skateboarding is popular today, it has been around for a long time. It began in the 1930s and 1940s when kids started attaching their roller skate wheels to the bottoms of two-by-fours to make the first form of a skateboard. The first modern skateboard was built and sold at the Val Surf shop in California in 1958. Skateboards were mainly made because surfers wanted to surf even when the waves weren’t up. They decided to mount wheels on square wooden boards. Skateboarding caught on fast in California, where it was known as sidewalk surfing, and the competitive skateboarding soon followed the new craze. ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” covered the National Skateboarding Championships by 1965. The popularity of skateboarding had almost completely died out by the end of the 1960s for a few reasons. The boards were very low tech, and sometimes became dangerous and the wheels were made of clay which meant they would stop turning when they hit a pebble or crack. Although this stopped the board, it did not stop the skateboarder. The clay wheels also lacked traction which made it nearly impossible to make tight turns.