Slow moving boulders skidding across ice, a competitive culture that reinforces inter-team politeness plus rules that call for winners to buy the losers a drink afterwards? It’s hard to imagine why it’s taken so long for the sport of curling to fully take its place alongside hockey, skating or ice fishing in Traverse City, but with the opening of new ice at the Traverse City Curling Club, it seems poised for its biggest breakout year in over a century.

But has curling been a part of Michigan history going back more than just a few Olympic games? Of course it has…sort of. The popularity of the sport has seen fits and starts for decades, and consistently has been misunderstood, miscategorized and generally giggled at for at least the last half of the 20th century. 

Throughout the state, curling dates back to the mid-1800s, years before the Scots themselves adopted a set of official rules for the sport in 1838. The first curling club in the nation incorporated in Michigan in 1831 when Orchard Lake residents started hurling hickory blocks across the ice. Decades later, the Marshall Statesman covered the Western National Curling Tournament in February 1870 while in Paw Paw, an 1899 report from the True Northman described the sport as “An Exhilarating Sport That Is Fast Becoming Americanized” alongside an impressive illustration of piratical-looking gents with brooms and a stone. 

Very little mention of the sport was made further north, save for the occasional wire report in the 1907 Evening Record about San Francisco Scotsmen bringing curling indoors (describing the “men of the Land O’ Cakes” as “a canny lot”) due to a lack of West Coast ice, or weirdly, curling as a sport in India when the colonizing Brits played at high altitudes when ice was available there. Even in February 1914, the Calumet News was already describing curling as “practically forgotten here.” 

The closest reference Traverse City saw through the 1930s was in a June report from the Traverse City Record-Eagle about the brand new shuffleboard club that had just been assembled to play “the gripping sport of southern resorts,” nothing that “the pastime can be pursued in summer and winter, taking on the aspect of curling in the cold weather.” 

Finally, in January 1953 the Record-Eagle reported on plans to incorporate a true curling organization in Traverse City, to be known as the Tam O’Shanter Curling Club. While the TC Curling Club’s current location in a former K-Mart may have raised a few eyebrows, it’s far preferable to the plans for this club: “Arrangements are being made … for use of the dairy cattle barn at the Fairgrounds as a rink site [which] would provide a covered rink area for the sport.” 

It took until February of 1955 before residents had a chance to “acquaint themselves with the ancient Scottish sport” with a local curling enthusiast acquiring a set of curling stones from a club in Wausau, Wisconsin (thanks Wausau!). “An area has been provided at the Fairgrounds indoor ice rink where curling may be played,” the R-E states with this caveat: “Provided there is sufficient interest here in the game.” Yes, that’s foreshadowing.

An April report on the record crowd drawn by TC’s winter sports program proclaimed that event a success, noting that amongst the 40,000 ice skaters at three outdoor rinks and nearly 9,000 skiers at Hickory Hills, there were 1,500 skaters at the indoor rink, “a new venture tried on an experimental basis … considerable interest was evinced in the sport of curling” and the city superintendent “recommends formation of an organization to foster and direct curling activities next season” (at the same time as the R-E also reported that the indoor rink actually operated at a loss that year). 

And then … no real news. For years. 

Like today, the Olympics sparked more interest in the sport when the 1960 games took place in Squaw Valley, California. Those games were the first to be widely televised and the first to have some sports take place on artificial ice - those two factors worked hand in hand to bring more hockey, skiing, and yes, curling across the country. It still took until the end of the decade for Ludington’s West Shore Community College to introduce curling as part of their winter phys ed courses. 

A 1969 Ludington Daily News column exhibits a continued cultural ignorance of curling (“A Sport Unrelated to Permanents,” aka perm hairstyles, reads one sub-headline) while also asking why West Shore didn’t have a football or a basketball team but was starting a curling club. “When you stop and analyze this thing,” says the unnamed columnist, realizing that this sport required actual skill, “you realize it has connotations of that popular game called shuffleboard.” Sound familiar? 

The WSCC program remained in place for years, followed by a curling course introduced at NMC (alongside the college’s first snow-shoeing course) starting in winter 1972. The sport went on to be included in the college’s first Winter Carnival as well as dogsled races and snow sculpture contests. 

Finally we arrive in 1976, when the Record-Eagle reported on a local exhibition at the Glacier Dome hosted by the Lewiston Curling Club. “Curling has probably been the butt of more jokes than Sonny Bono,” the column opened in a statement so mid-70s it comes with shag carpeting and fueled by leaded gas. “It’s not too often you see a bowling ball-sized stone with a handle on it. But still, curling possesses a fascination all its own.” 

The Traverse City exhibition was deemed an overall success, with more than a hundred fans observing the sport. Decades after residents tried to establish their own club, organizers hoped there would be enough interest to start a TC chapter since only Lewiston, Detroit and Midland were hosting clubs at the time. “And why not?” asks the Record-Eagle. “It’s more fun than Sonny Bono jokes.”