Jake Burton

Jake Burton, originally named Jake Burton Carpenter at birth, is most famously known as the inventor of the snowboard, founder of Burton Snowboards as well as an American snowboarder himself. Burton was born in 1954 in El Paso, Texas and grew up in the northeast. Spending years in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, Burton first started off as an avid skier. However, he ended his skiing career after being involved in a serious car accident and even had to take time off from college. He ultimately graduated from New York University with a degree in economics and moved to Vermont afterwards. In Vermont, he improved upon an earlier introduced version of a snowboard, called a Snurfer, and essentially created today’s version of a snowboard. He began selling them in the ‘70’s and has not looked back since. Burton was inducted into the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame in 2012 as a builder and innovator. He will forever go down in history as someone who changed the lives of millions of people with the establishment of the snowboard.