What a day it was in Curlew! On Saturday, January 15, over 70 people came out to celebrate the inaugural Ferry County Rail Trail Ski Day. This was the very first organized public event on the Rail Trail and will certainly not be the last. Folks aged 2 to 80 tried out skiing or snowshoeing along a picturesque stretch of the Kettle River just north of the village of Curlew. Some were old hands at self-propelled snow sports; others were out for their first time. Smiles were contagious as the ski conditions were excellent and the weather was warm.

In 1913, a Ford dealer in New Hampshire converted a Model T, equipping it with a track and ski set-up to allow it to travel over snow. Virgil White named his invention a “snowmobile." Over the years, various improvements were made on this original design (including an air-driven version powered by a propeller) until 1954, when the first recreational snowmobile appeared. From that point on, snowmobiling as a recreational activity began to grow in popularity and by the 1960s, had become very common in snow belt communities in the US and Canada.