Where did whitewater rafting originate from?

Question

Where did whitewater rafting originate from?

Answer 1

In a grand sense white water rafting evolved from the need and desire for transportation on water.  There is also the basic human need for exploration and excitement.  Rivers have often been the fastest way to explore new lands and to be able to easily transport the food and supplies that are often required for these journeys.  This desire for exploration drove many of the innovations in early white water travel.

For most of human history boats have been ill suited for travel on white water rivers.  The original boats for white water were wooden dories.  These were the boats the John Wesley Powell used to descend the Grand Canyon.  Some people still use dories today in the Grand Canyon and on other high volume rivers where hitting rock is a infrequent occurrence.  The next big step in rafting came with the development of neoprene and the use of neoprene for life rafts during World War II.  These first rafts were designed for ocean swells but proved serviceable for rivers.  Neoprene offered a major advantage over wood - impact resistance.  With these boats many new rivers were descended for the first time.  Where wooden dories were likely to break up on rocks neoprene was both impact and abrasion resistant.  Today neoprene is still used and Hypalon,  a more developed variant of neoprene, is used by many if not most whitewater raft manufacturers.  Other modern plastics - PVC and Polyurethane are also used to make modern whitewater rafts.

Answer 2

Wow...that's quite a history lesson.  All this time I thought it was some numb nuts like me who had an inner tube or something and saw some rapids and thought "I wonder what would happen if I.....".  Thank God that there are still a few of us left.  Now, I run a 16' Aire Cataraft down class IV and V western rivers thinking "I wonder what would happen if I.....".