Pardeeville Curling Club

About Pardeeville Curling Club

Pardeeville Curling Club: Curling Since Before Custer’s Last Stand

Pardeeville Curling Club dates its founding to 1875, a fact members like to point out predates Custer’s Last Stand, and curling in the Columbia County village may be older still: the Grand National Curling Club of America lists a Pardeeville rink in national competition in 1872. The first games were played outdoors on Park Lake, followed by a rink in Chandler Park. A Pardeeville curler, L.J. Tucker, served as the first president of the Wisconsin Curling Association when it was founded in 1908.

In 1922 the club built a curling house on the edge of Park Lake at Lake and Second Streets, installed artificial ice in 1938 and replaced the wooden building with a concrete structure in the 1950s. The clubroom has since been enlarged and the lobby remodeled, and in the 2000s the ice house gained insulation, heating and dehumidification. Today the club curls on two sheets of dedicated ice.

Women first curled at Pardeeville in 1953 and formed their own club, the Pardee Pipers, in 1960; the two organizations merged in 1987. The club is one of five in Columbia County, which has the highest concentration of curling clubs in the nation.