Snowshoeing was once the mode of snow travel used in North America. Hunters, trappers, farmers, timber cruisers, surveyors, prospectors, explorers, soldiers, etc used snowshoes. Anybody needing to travel in snow country owned them and most made their own until about one hundred years ago. They were as important to taming the West as were the axe and flint-lock rifle.
Other modes of winter snow travel did not enter America until Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns began to immigrate in the early 1800s. They introduced the now popular ski, which did not overtake the snowshoe in overall use until the 1960s. Of course the snowmobile is now also in common use as a mode of snow travel, not to mention automobiles and trucks.
Today, it has become one of the winter sports that people no longer do it for surviving but more of a leisure. I had a good experience of snow shoeing but the price I paid was getting two huge blisters on my feet and they took a month to heal and a box of band-aids.. haha.. I'd sure love to go again during break because it's too busy with school works now :( sob.. sob..
History of snow shoeing: http://www.anchorage.net/1283.cfm
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