How a Pioneer Press reporter ‘discovered’ the inventor of water skiing
One hundred years ago this week, a Minnesotan named Ralph Samuelson did something no one ever had.
Gripping an iron ring at the end of a rope tied to his brother’s motorboat, the 18-year-old daredevil stood on a pair of pine boards and skipped across the surface of Lake Pepin. Samuelson was the first person in recorded history to ski on water.
Within a couple of decades, the sport he invented was a global phenomenon. Water skiing remains one of the most popular water sports in the world today.
Samuelson, who died in 1977, will be saluted Saturday — the centennial anniversary of his first successful run — in his hometown of Lake City, where a life-size bronze statue of the “father of water skiing” will be unveiled on the shore of Lake Pepin.
“It’s really given us an identity,” said John Hutchinson, president of the civic booster organization Destination Lake City. “I think people are pretty enthusiastic that this happened here in Lake City.”
But if it hadn’t been for a Pioneer Press reporter vacationing in the small resort community in the 1960s, credit for the invention of water skiing might have gone to someone else.
By then, several competing accounts of the sport’s origin were circulating, and Samuelson’s wasn’t among them. The leading theory was that Fred Waller, a New Yorker who held the first patent on water skis, invented the sport in 1924.
Enter Margaret Crimmins, women’s editor of the Pioneer Press, who penned a series of articles about Samuelson’s exploits after seeing his skis displayed at the Lake City bathhouse in 1963. Her research proved Samuelson’s claim predated Waller’s by two years.
“I honestly believe that if Margaret Crimmins had not done what she did, Lake City would not be known as the birthplace of water skiing” Hutchinson said.
‘CRAZY RALPH SAMUELSON’
Samuelson grew up within easy walking distance of Lake Pepin, which is actually a wide stretch of the Mississippi River, where his family eked out a living digging clams.
Even as a youngster he had a taste for adventure, and Samuelson’s earliest memories were of time spent on the lake.
“That river bank soon became a playground for me, where I could find a hundred things to do,” he told historian Gregor Ziemer, who wrote a 2005 biography of Samuelson titled, “A Daredevil & Two Boards.”
By the time he was a teenager, Samuelson had mastered the aquaplane, a flat, wooden precursor to modern wakeboards. With motorboats still in their infancy, Samuelson relied on his older brother to pull him in a 20-foot clamming vessel, which had a top speed of just over 16 mph.
Lake Pepin was still covered with ice in early 1922 when Samuelson started daydreaming of ditching his aquaplane for a pair of skis, wondering “if you could ski on snow, why not on water?” Ziemer writes.
Samuelson told Ziemer “the idea nagged me so hard, that every time I went near that lake … I wondered — wouldn’t it be great to skip along the surface, like one of those almost transparent dragonflies that did it like magic?”
As soon as the water was warm enough that spring, Samuelson began experimenting behind the clamming boat — first with barrel staves, then with snow skis. Neither worked.
“A lot of people would sit on the side of the bank down here and talk about crazy Ralph Samuelson and how he was going to drown himself,” Hutchinson said.
Finally, Samuelson bought a pair of huge boards for a dollar apiece at a local lumberyard and curled the square tips. At 8 feet long and 9 inches wide, they bore little resemblance to modern water skis.
“They didn’t have powerful boats like they do today,” Hutchinson said. “He got the idea that he needed more surface area to give him more lift.”
After a few days of trial and error, Samuelson finally rode his twin boards into history at 4:11 p.m. on July 2, 1922.
Over the next few summers, he put on weekly water skiing exhibitions at Lake Pepin, performing the world’s first water ski jump in July 1925 when he fashioned a ramp out of a floating diving platform. That August, he even skied at 80 mph behind a Curtiss flying boat, a World War I airplane with a 200-horsepower engine.
Samuelson then took his show on the road, wowing crowds in Michigan and Florida. His stunts earned him front-page coverage in local newspapers and the applause of stunned spectators.
But a spinal injury he suffered while working on a construction project in 1927 effectively ended Samuelson’s skiing career. Returning to Minnesota, Samuelson turned to turkey farming, with a successful operation in Mazeppa, about 20 miles north of Rochester.
His skis were eventually put on display next to the candy counter at the Lake City bathhouse, beneath a homemade sign declaring that they were the world’s first. There they remained until Crimmins stopped in for an ice cream bar in 1963 and spotted them.
‘WHERE ARE YOU NOW, MR. SAMELSON?’
When the proprietor told her the birth of water skiing had taken place just down the beach on Lake Pepin, Crimmins put her vacation on hold to do a little reporting. She even tried Samuelson’s “gargantuan” skis out for herself.
“Getting the tips of those eight-foot monsters above the water is a trick in itself,” Crimmins wrote in a July 1963 article in the Pioneer Press.
Although she got a couple of facts wrong — she spelled his name “Samelson” and placed his first successful ski run in 1924 — Crimmins seemed to suspect she’d stumbled upon something significant. She appealed to Samuelson to get in touch with her and share his story.
“Where are you now, Mr. Samelson?” she wrote. “There are a lot of details we would like to have you fill in on your experiences.”
By then, Samuelson had seen a run of bad luck. His turkey flock had been wiped out by disease, leaving him and his wife bankrupt. Foreclosure had recently forced the couple out of their beloved farm in Mazeppa and into a house in nearby Pine Island.
When Samuelson saw Crimmins’ piece in his Sunday paper, he was only too happy to relive his glory days and claim his rightful place in water skiing history.
“It was like a voice out of my past,” he told Ziemer. “Frankly, when I read that article in the Pioneer Press that hot Sunday morning in July after we had come home from church, I was hit right between the eyes — hard.”
Over the next couple of years, Samuelson and Crimmins pieced together an airtight case that he was in fact the world’s first water skier.
Crimmins published a second article in September 1965, citing early news reports and eye-witness accounts confirming that Samuelson made his first ski run in 1922 — it even included photographic evidence to bolster the claim.
The Lake City Chamber of Commerce wrote to the American Water Ski Association — now USA Water Ski & Wake Sports — asking them to review Crimmins’ research. In January 1966, the organization declared Samuelson the “father of water skiing.”
By the time he died a decade later, Samuelson was a celebrity in water skiing circles, attending professional tournaments as guest of honor and being feted at Lake City’s annual Water Ski Days celebration. He wasn’t bitter about having to wait 40 years for recognition.
“Had I realized what I had started, perhaps I would immediately have patented my skis — gotten some sort of publicity, had myself photographed by sports magazines, perhaps had cards printed calling myself ‘The Inventor of Water Skiing’ — cashed in somehow,” he told Ziemer.
“Fact is, I was stupid about the significance of what I had done.”
Related Articles
Outdoors | Boat show geared to paddlers planned in Marine on St. Croix
Outdoors | Minnesota man’s personalized fishing rods are functional art
Outdoors | Aided by wet spring, Minnesota’s disease-carrying tick population heads for summertime peak
Outdoors | Minnesota DNR releases updated plan on wolf management, but doesn’t take position on hunting
