Five girls living in Eau Claire’s Third Ward Neighborhood spent the afternoon and evening of Thursday, July 15 circumnavigating one of the largest city blocks (take a look) with a colorful 1,800 square, 2,000-foot-long sidewalk Hopscotch course, requiring one hundred pieces of colored sidewalk chalk.

The girls, ages 11 to 16 (shown on the right), circled the block starting with the odd side of the street on the 400 block of Lincoln Avenue, turned onto Farwell Street, then to Garfield Avenue, then Wilson Street, ending where they began after six hours of work.

“Today the block, tomorrow the city,” joked one of the four Smith sisters (Maria, Elena, Zoe, and Sophia) who all worked on the project and live a block away on Summit Avenue.

“You got it done, and you got it all hopped,” said Cheryl Muller, of 401 Lincoln Ave., from her front porch where the course began and ended.  Claudia Schwartz, 16, Muller’s daughter, was the fifth chalker and lead instigator of the feat.

It took 9 minutes for the girls to Hopscotch the entire way around the block, and was reportedly far less effort than chalking it in the first place. The colorful chalk Hopscotch was on view and hoppable for two full days before a weekend storm wiped the sidewalks clean.

Given the size of the Hopscotch course, speculation grew in the neighborhood as to what the longest Hopscotch course on record actually was. A less than thorough web search yields speculation that the longest courses have been over 10,000 squares and between two and three miles long. Could these Eau Claire girls be on to something? Could this have been just a warm-up? Maybe Eau Claire’s youth could get together and create the world’s longest, as part of an upcoming Chalkfest, perhaps? You decide.

UPDATE! Video: