Where Did Skateboards Come From, and Why Did They Nearly Disappear?

The First Skateboards Were Roller-Skate Wheels on a Plank

The Strong National Museum of Play, which holds a large collection about the history of play, describes the starting point: in the 1940s and 1950s, children built homemade sidewalk scooters by nailing roller-skate wheels to a wooden board and fixing a wooden crate to the front as a handlebar. Kids eventually pulled the crate off, and what was left was a board with wheels [1].

By 1959 some of the first factory-made skateboards were coming out of the Roller Derby company in La Mirada, California, sold through roller rinks and later by mail order [1]. In the early 1960s, surfers began riding the boards on days when the waves were poor. The name “sidewalk surfer” appeared (sidewalk is the American word for pavement), and in 1963 a surfing-magazine publisher named Larry Stevenson launched “Makaha” skateboards and organized what the museum calls the first skateboarding contest [1].

So the skateboard did not begin as a new invention. It began as a leftover: wheels borrowed from roller skates. That matters, because the wheels are where the trouble started.

Hard Wheels Stopped at Small Bumps, and Many Cities Banned the Boards

The Strong museum estimates that about 50 million skateboards were sold between 1963 and 1965, and notes that the early clay wheels had replaced even more dangerous metal ones [1]. Then it turns grim: by the end of 1965, the number of skateboard injuries seen in hospital emergency rooms led many cities to ban skateboarding, and sales collapsed [1].

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History explains the problem in its description of an early-1970s board. Before the change you are about to read about, wheels of steel, plastic, clay or crushed-walnut composite gave a rough ride, and even a small rock could stop the board and throw the rider [2]. A simple way to picture it: a very hard wheel cannot squash or grip at all, so a small stone is a wall to it, while a wheel with a little give can hold the ground and roll over the stone.

Notice what the ban did not say. People were not turning against the idea of riding a board. The trouble was the equipment under their feet.

A Roller-Skate Wheel Made of Urethane Brought Skateboards Back

The fix came from a place nobody was looking. Frank Nasworthy was a student who, in the summer of 1970, visited a plastics factory in Purcellville, Virginia that was experimenting with urethane wheels for roller skates. Roller skaters mostly rejected them in favor of hard wheels. Nasworthy saw that the same material, with its much better traction, could suit skateboards [3].

He put in $500 and started the Cadillac Wheels company, named for the smooth ride. According to Wikipedia’s account, which cites a 1975 Sports Illustrated article, he was selling 300,000 sets of wheels a year by 1975 [3]. The Strong museum dates the arrival of the urethane wheel to 1972 and says it began skateboarding’s second wave, starting in 1973 [4]. The museum adds that urethane let riders turn without sliding out [1].

This is the surprise of the story. The wheel that rescued skateboarding was one that roller skaters had mostly turned down. The sport was reborn by borrowing a second time.

After the Comeback, Skaters Rode Empty Swimming Pools and Learned to Jump

Better wheels did more than make a ride smoother. They changed where people dared to go. In 1975, the Zephyr team, a group of young skaters later nicknamed the Z-Boys, “blew away the competition” at a contest in Del Mar with a low, flowing, surf-like style, according to the Strong museum [4]. Then a drought in 1976 left many backyard swimming pools empty, and skaters began riding their curved walls, which helped create “vert” skating on near-vertical surfaces [4]. It is a reasonable guess, not something the sources state, that wheels with real grip are part of why such steep walls became rideable.

The skatepark and pool walls led to a trick. Alan Gelfand is credited with inventing the ollie in the late 1970s, a way to make the board rise into the air without using your hands. His nickname gave the trick its name [5]. According to Gelfand, as Wikipedia reports it, the discovery was an accident: in rough, poorly built park features, he would ride up a wall so steeply that he went past straight up, and the board would swing back toward his legs [5].

Sources disagree a little on the date. The Strong museum says 1978, while Wikipedia says Gelfand first did it in 1976 in Florida and refined it by 1979 [4][5]. “The late 1970s” is the safe way to say it.

Skateparks Closed, and Skating Moved Into City Streets

Skateparks multiplied in the 1970s, then ran into trouble. The Public Skatepark Development Guide says that in the late 1970s a flood of liability lawsuits made insurers tighten what they would cover, and by 1980 only a small handful of skateparks were left [6]. The Strong museum adds that insurance costs rose sharply after injuries, especially from vertical skating [4].

Skaters moved out of the parks and into the streets. For that, the jump needed to work on flat ground, not only on a curved wall. In 1982, at a contest in Whittier, California, Rodney Mullen showed an ollie on flat ground, using a see-saw motion: hit the tail on the ground so the nose rises, then use the front foot to level the board in the air [7]. Mullen himself later said that skating might easily have petered out from lack of progress if nobody had invented this trick [7]. By 1991, the museum says, street skating had become the main form of the sport [4].

This brings the story back to the beginning. The same streets and sidewalks that cities had tried to close to skateboards in 1965 became, a generation later, the sport’s main stage.

From a Banned Toy to the Olympic Games

Skateboarding made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games, which were held in 2021. Competition ran from July 25 to August 5 at the Ariake Urban Sports Park, with four events: street and park for both men and women [8]. In the men’s street final on July 25, Yuto Horigome of Japan won gold in his home city. Momiji Nishiya, also of Japan, won the women’s street event at age 13, with a 13-year-old from Brazil in second [9].

Horigome and Nishiya come from Japan, but the sport itself began in California, as the sources above show. From crate scooters and a stopped wheel to a gold medal, the line runs through wheels, jumps and streets.

How to Look at Skateboard Wheels Yourself, Without Riding

You do not need a board under your feet to follow this story. This is a suggestion of mine, not something taken from the sources above. If someone you know has a skateboard, a scooter or inline skates, look closely at the wheels. Many skateboard wheels have a size in millimeters and a hardness number followed by the letter “A” printed on them. Skateboard shops explain that a higher number means a harder wheel, and that softer wheels roll over cracks and rough ground more easily while harder ones suit smooth surfaces and tricks [10].

1. Find the number on the wheel. If there are several boards, scooters or skates around, compare them.
2. Press a fingernail gently into the wheel. Does a bigger number feel harder?
3. Hold the board upside down, or set it upside down on a table so it cannot roll away, and give one wheel a gentle flick with a finger. Keep fingers clear of the wheel as it spins. Which wheels spin longest?

Then ask yourself what the 1965 riders would have noticed. If you do want to ride, health groups advise a helmet made for skateboarding or multiple sports, plus wrist guards, knee and elbow pads, and a smooth place away from traffic [11]. Another good activity is to watch a local skatepark from outside the fence and see how the wheels handle the ground.

Sources

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