Back to H.L. Mencken and his book The American Language, he says in Supplement One (1945) that one of the Britishisms “that deserve American adoption” is “‘pub-crawl’ (a tour of saloons).” I’m pretty sure my readers don’t need that definition, so familiar has the phrase become on this side of the Atlantic. But it definitely had British origins.
It sprang from more more specific sorts of alcoholic “crawls.” The OED‘s first citations (Bird o’ Freedom is Australian; the other publications are English):
The familiar modern form first appears in a quote from Thomas Burke’s 1915 book Nights in Town, the quotation marks suggesting recent coinage: “We did a ‘pub-crawl’ in Commercial Road and East India Dock Road.” All subsequent OED citations are British.
Google Ngram Viewer shows modest U.S. use from the 1930s through the ’70s–so modest that many if not most of the hits probably came from British books published in the U.S., travel books about Britian or Australia, or dialogue in novels from the mouths of British speakers. The rise from the ’80s through the present is real, though. (And the decline in Britain post-2000 could reflect awareness of American appropriation.)
The first use I could find in the New York Times by an American came in a 1975 column by the great Russell Baker–who had been a foreign correspondent in London early in his career. He’s talking about the world of different magazines, and says that in Esquire, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti always seems to be jogging with Muhammad Ali while Norman Mailer is on a pub crawl with Vergil.” (Elsewhere, Baker writes, “Not that the world of People isn’t a pretty gosh‐dam wonderful place, too. Life may not be very exhilarating in the world of People, but it is beautiful. There I meet Prince Charles, who has no problems, and Erica Jong, who has fame, beauty and success. And J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world! I learn that Catherine Deneuve is beautiful and Liza Minnelli is talented and Mikhail Baryshnikov is happy. What a sweet world. It is what the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been if Fitzgerald had been ghostwritten by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.” Here’s a gift-link to the rest of the pretty gosh-darn wonderful column.)
However, in the 21st century, “pub crawl” has appeared 280 times in the Times, including in an article last year about the (American) football-playing brothers Travis and Jason Kelce, Billy Witz writes that Jason, “who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, has followed his brother’s team on what has looked like a bare-chested pub crawl through the playoffs.”
And any doubt I might have had that “pub crawl” has achieved “adoption” as well as commercialization in America is removed when I Google it on my phone (which of course knows I live near Philadelphia) and this pops up:
notoneoffbritishisms.com 
“And the decline in Britain post-2000 could reflect awareness of American appropriation”
I suspect it’s more to do with the declining centrality of the pub to British social life.
Agree, and probably also the declining levels of alcohol consumption; ‘pub crawl’ def associated with binging in sequence.
Seems like a fairly British term to me. The first time I encountered it was when I did it with a friend in Gibraltar in 1989. It was pretty straight and downhill. I don’t remember how we got back, possibly because we were probably actually crawling by the time we reached our final pub.
In the US, it seems a marketing term more than anything else. I don’t know that people go on pub crawls unless they have signed up for a “pub crawl.” But what do I know, as it has been many years since I entertained the notion.
Love this. Let’s do it some time.
Well then, I’m keen to take a pub crawl!
Some pub crawls are now formalised. The most eminent is the Otley Run in Leeds, which includes 17 pubs. Details are at: https://leeds-list.com/food-and-drink/the-otley-run-survival-guide/
Edgar Wright’s 2013 film The World’s End is an alien-invasion science fiction comedy where several 40-something mates get together at the urging of Simon Pegg, an immature alcoholic somewhat stuck in the past, in order to attempt a legendary 12-pub crawl that they had failed to complete as teenagers. Some of the others have grown up, and one is now teetotal – perhaps reflecting the idea above that pubs are less central to British social life these days. Certainly lots of pubs close their doors forever each year.
The names of the pubs – the first is The First Post and the last The World’s End, where the world sort of ends – relate to the plot as it unfolds, like scene titles.
https://screenrant.com/worlds-end-pub-names-hidden-meanings/
Knitters and crocheters have been going on “yarn crawls” for the past 10-15 years. A yarn crawl is an organized event where the group goes to a series of yarn stores in fairly close proximity to shop for yarn. The shop owners usually have some sort of discount or giveaway for the participants, and the crawl often ends with the group going to a restaurant or coffee shop to show off their purchases and discuss their plans for the yarn.