FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) -- When co-founder Craig Fisher started the Fort Wayne Curling Club 14 years ago, he had no idea that he was revamping an old Fort Wayne tradition. With research conducted by the Fort Wayne Historical Society, we now know the club is actually about 130 years old and now boasts over 100 members after disappearing from the city for almost 100 years. According to the records collected, the first curling stone was delivered in Fort Wayne in the 1880s on a frozen Mirror Lake. "Brookside farm, which is now Saint Francis, curling started there," Fischer said. "A guy by the name of David McKay, he was Scottish, he was the general manager of the farm and he introduced the sport." Over the next 20 years, curling would take over the icy plots around the city, including Centlivre, Headwaters and Lakeside Parks.The sport had attracted so many new people eager to curl, that rivalries had started to form in city limits. "At one point there were three different curling clubs in the city of Fort Wayne that would compete against each other each year for a big tournament," Fischer said. In 1905, curlers had their dreams realized by a local businessman and booster of the club, Charles F. Centlivre. The original Fort Wayne Curling Club. The first curling facility opened in 1905 The first curling facility was located across North Side High School The club's current facility has three lanes for curling. Members practice on Sunday and Monday nights. A curling match is played with curling stones and brooms. Dental Clinic fills vital need in the community "It was somewhat open to allow the outside air temperature to freeze the ice, but they would curl there for about 5 or 6 years until World War One," Fischer said. But by 1918, the facility would be taken over by the Battery B. Battalion after the club was officially removed from the Fort Wayne City Directory six years earlier.According to the Fort Wayne Historical Society, no reason for the curling club's disappearance was ever given and no further evidence to suggest that curling even existed in Fort Wayne was ever found.That is, of course, until Craig Fisher and his wife were captivated by curling when watching the Olympics. He says it looked like a sport he could do with the whole family. "My wife and I are a parent of a child with autism, and my wife went online and did some research and found out there's a delivery stick you could use to deliver the stones instead of doing a slide," Fischer said. "[We] thought, "you know, this is something he could do with us." On June 5, 2010, after three months of planning, the founders organized a series of learn-to-curls at SportsONE Parkview Icehouse. The club initially gained about 80 members, but over the next three years, the Fort Wayne Curling Club would see a decline in members due to late practice times and limited capacity for new players. Fischer also stated he believes the lack of continuous excitement surrounding the sport also contributed to the dip in members. "Everyone gets excited about curling when they see it in the Olympics, and then everyone forgets about it for four years," Fischer said. With just 24 players remaining, Fischer stated he and his fellow founders knew it was time to take action. "Either the [club was] going to go away or we needed to do something dramatic, so we followed the field of dreams model and said build it and they will come, and we built our facility in 2014 and went from 24 members to 75 members, basically overnight," Fischer said. In 2014, the curling club finally had full control over its new rented facility where players practiced, hosted tournaments and forged friendships. Now, in the club's current residence on Wells Street, members said the Fort Wayne Curling Club is there to stay. For more information on the history of the club, how the club was restarted and how to get involved, visit the Fort Wayne Curling Club's website.