Burton Snowboards Immortalized With Official Historical Marker

On October 3rd, the town of Londonderry, Vermont -- the birthplace of the iconic Burton Snowboards -- commemorated the founding of the titular brand with an honorary plaque.

Burton Snowboards was founded by Jake Burton Carpenter, an innovator credited as one of the central figures in the creation of modern-day snowboarding.

You might be wondering what this has to do with skiing. To be blunt, it has everything to do with skiing.

By kickstarting modern snowboarding, Jake Burton massively influenced the future of skiing. The evolution of skiing as we know it, particularly freestyle skiing, is endlessly indebted to snowboarding.

Snowboarding blazed the trail in terrain parks and set the blueprint for bidirectional ski builds. Skiers who wanted to also go backward and throw tricks took note of what snowboarding was up to, ultimately leading to the creation of the now-ubiquitous twin-tip ski.

And that's not to mention the cultural influence snowboarding holds over skiing. I've always thought that in snow sports, trends originate in skating or surfing, pass through snowboarding, with skiing finally picking up the cultural crumbs.

Here, I'm talking primarily about fashion and freestyle. Pay attention closely; you'll notice how much skiing has borrowed from snowboarding, from trick names to outerwear choices. Those grungy, fisheye camera ski movies that are all the rage these days? Snowboarding did it first.

That's all to say Jake Burton's innovations didn't just benefit the future snowboarders of the world. With the creation of Burton Snowboards, he pushed the entirety of snowsports forward -- a feat for which he'll always deserve eternal praise.

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