Can you ever forget your first sled ride?
Mom bundled you up and wrapped a scarf around your face. Then Dad plopped you on the sled, in front of him, put his feet on the runners, and SHAZAM!!!
The hill raced past, the runners dug in, and fresh powder snow froze your face. What freedom! What exhilaration! Who dreamed life could be this thrilling?
Then, after the long hike up the hill, you begged to attempt the daring solo ride. Pushing off with your hands, the sled shot forward, snow blinded you, the sled flipped, and BAM! You stopped dead in a snow bank. …surprised and exhilarated.
Millions of sled runs would follow. Winter would never be the same again.
The sled, one of man's first vehicles, has also become one of his most sophisticated toys. Its scope encompasses everything from bone-runnered sledges to $12,000 Italian bobsleds.
Cave drawings from 15,000 years ago show early man using sleds over both dry and snow-covered ground. About 5000 B.C., the sledge, or sled, was as much a part of the North American, European, and Mideastern cultures as the car is today. The prehistoric wooden runners of sleds that hauled freshly killed game through northern Europe's forests have been discovered in bogs. And 4,000-year-old stone carvings portray Sumerians and Assyrians hauling giant statues and blocks on sleds.
With the Eskimos, it developed into a dogsled of bones and animal skin. The Algonquian Indians turned it into a toboggan, with a turned-up front end. The Laplander's pulka is shaped like a sawed-off canoe and hitched to reindeer.
For centuries sleds pulled everything from manure to royalty. Horse-drawn sleighs took on the real and fantastic shapes of swans, dragons, and other beasts. Russians bundled up in three-horse "troikas," and Americans dashed about in "cutters."
Downhill sledding whooshed to popularity
In the sixteenth century people discovered the joys of whooshing down a mountain on a sled. But it wasn't until the nineteenth century that downhill sledding shooshed to popularity; sled design flourished and sledding became a sport.
By 1850 prominent sleds had become as well known in America as certain racehorses and yachts are today. They were built of black walnut and upholstered in enameled leather hammered in place by gold tacks. Runners were forged of "silver steel" and burnished for speed.
Strict sled behavior was the order of the day. Boys raced headlong on clippers, while girls sat up straight.
Sledding gained ground when the English discovered the brilliant winter sun in the Alps. Vacationing at Swiss alpine spas, British gentlemen and their long-skirted ladies took to sliding in handsleds, which Swiss mailmen used for delivering mail up and down snow-clad
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