Curling History (continued)
likely date to the late 1700s. The first documented record is the founding of the Montreal Curling Club in 1807.
In 1832, the Orchard Lake Curling Club, near Detroit, became the first curling club in the United States, organized at the home of Dr. Robert Burns. The Orchard Lake group curled on Lake St. Clair. The oldest continuously operating curling club in the United States is the Milwaukee, Wisconsin club, founded in 1845. The Scottish founders’ roster included such names as Murray, Ferguson, Dunlop, Gunyon, Findlay, Kinney, McFarland and McFadyen.
Since the mid-1800s, curling has spread and thrived in northern states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and also in the Great Lakes, New England and mid-Atlantic states. There are dedicated pockets of curling activity in other states, including Alaska, Washington, California, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and North Carolina. In all, there are active curling clubs in 26 states in the nation.
In the United States today, there are over 15,000 curlers in over 135 clubs, most of which own their ice facility. While many U.S. curlers have Scottish roots, modern curling club membership rosters tend to reflect an ethnic cross-section of their communities, which are preponderantly small-town rural. The largest curling club in the USA is the St. Paul, Minnesota, club, with over 700 members.
