Bobcat Pass Wilderness Adventures, Red River Back Country Adventures and Red River Sled Shed offer guided snowmobile tours to the high country. Red River Offroad provides UTV snowcat tours capable of carrying several people, advertised as the alternative to snowmobile tours.
The first appearance in Red River of motorized tracked vehicles is believed to have occurred in the late 1960s when Johnnie Mutz brought a Johnson Ski Horse to town. While tracked vehicles were designed for industrial use for logging, law enforcement and utility companies in northern climates where snow made autos impractical, the recreational value soon became apparent. By the late 1960s and 1970s, snowmobile tour companies were taking Red River visitors to the high country meadows and places like Greenie Peak for a rare glimpse of spectacular winter vistas at the top of the world.
While modern day recreational snowmos are a fairly recent creation, over-the-snow motorized travel goes back to around 1908, five years after the Wright brothers sailed into the skies of North Carolina.
The Lombard log hauler, a large and cumbersome machine resembling a steam locomotive (half track design with skis up front), was designed and built in Waterville, Maine. It had no steering mechanism, so its use as a log hauler was limited to straight lines, a thrill to drive.
O.C. Johnson is credited with constructing the first steerable machine in 1909, a ten-foot long “one lunger” that traveled on top of the snow. By 1922, J. Armond Bombardier produced a wind-driven sleigh using a Model T engine. The Canadian youth was only fifteen years old at the time.
Bombardier would continue development of snow machines through World War II, creating a more powerful model for the Canadian government which was interested in transporting troops in battle. He would eventually be the creator of Ski-Doos which turned the tracked machines from workhorses to recreational fun vehicles.
The first U.S. Patent for a single rubber track vehicle was filed in 1927 by Carl Eliason of Wisconsin. Eliason had built his first “motorized toboggan,” as he called it, in 1924. It was a wooden toboggan fitted with two skis, steered with a rope and powered by a small Johnson outboard motor.
In the 1970s, the number of companies manufacturing snowmobiles was 100+. Tractor-makers John Deere and Massey Ferguson produced machines, motorcycle-makers Harley Davidson and Kawasaki built sleds and J.C. Penny’s and Sears offered their own brands in catalogs and stores. As of 2020, there are four manufacturers on the North American continent, three in the US and one in Canada.
