Edgar Hetteen didn’t invent the first snowmobile. But he did invent the sport of snowmobiling.

Hetteen was the northern Minnesota tinkerer with an eighth-grade education who co-founded the company that became Polaris Industries, founded the company that makes Arctic Cats and set out on a 1,200-mile snowmobile trek across the Alaska wilderness in 1960 to prove the reliability of the machines being made by his fledgling industry.

Hetteen died Saturday in Grand Rapids. He was 90.

The Roseau native, dubbed “the grandfather of snowmobiling,” had started a farm implement company in Roseau called Hetteen Hoist and Derrick with his brother, Allan, and brother-in-law David Johnson.

“One guy needed a machine to get to his pasture, and thus a snowmobile was made,” said Hetteen’s grandson, Jeff Guibault.

That first machine was developed in 1954 or 1955. Hetteen both worked on improving the unreliable early machines and became their leading advocate.

Gary Lemke, a business associate and an early snowmobile dealer, said Hetteen used to describe the first snowmobiles as “a product that didn’t work that he was trying to sell to someone who didn’t want it.”

But in 1960, Hetteen and three companions set out on the trek across Alaska to demonstrate the potential of the devices.

“He kind of risked his own life to prove snowmobiles were reliable and durable,” said Jay Lemke, Gary Lemke’s son and ghostwriter of Hetteen’s autobiography, “Breaking Trail.”

Gary Lemke said the Alaska trip was made despite opposition within Polaris by company officials who felt the firm should concentrate on farm machinery.

“He had a lot of tenacity,” Lemke said.

He was also “a stubborn, ornery, irascible, persistent, dogged, narrow-minded, argumentative, pushy son of a gun,” according to a business executive quoted in Hetteen’s book.

Hetteen left Polaris in 1961. A year later, he started a competing company, Arctco Inc. of Thief River Falls, which manufactured Arctic Cat snowmobiles. Under Hetteen’s leadership, the company made the first lightweight snowmobile designed for sport rather than work, Lemke said.

Hetteen also started a wheelchair company called May Corp. and, with Gary Lemke, started ASV Inc. in 1983 to make rubber-tracked vehicles.

“He was a serial entrepreneur,” Jay Lemke said. “He should go down as one of the great entrepreneurs of Minnesota.”

Hetteen retired from ASV in 2004, but he kept snowmobiling until a few years ago, said daughter-in-law Nila Hetteen. She said his last machine was a 2004 Polaris Classic 440.

Guibault said the snowmobile legend was a stickler for safe riding.

“Everyone had to sit down and listen to ‘the speech,’ ” Guibault said of family rides. “The same thing, over and over: ‘These machines will kill you.’ ”

Hetteen is survived by his wife, Hannah, and daughter, Patricia Glagavs. Visitation will be from 12:30 p.m. until the 2 p.m. funeral service on Saturday at Grace Bible Chapel, 2452 County Road 76, Grand Rapids.

Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560.