Of Cross-Country Road Trips and Safety Bicycles

The personal mobility boom of the late 19th century

On The Road, Easy Rider, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and National Lampoon’s Vacation

The cross-country road trip is as much a part of our cultural fabric as hot dogs and apple pie. From Kerouac's "On the Road" to National Lampoon's "Vacation", countless tales have been told of finding one's self between the purple mountains majesty and the fruited plains. It wasn’t always like this though. At the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the internal combustion age, crossing the country with a gasoline powered vehicle was folly.

The Virginia Enterprise, July 21, 1899, Virginia, Minnesota

John D. Davis and his wife Louise Hitchcock Davis attempted to drive a Duryea (the first American car maker) from New York City to California in 1899. This was so long ago that the Duryea was steered via a tiller, not a steering wheel. It took the plucky couple weeks just to get to Chicago, their every move documented by news media fascinated with the journey, but they abandoned their attempt in the Windy City. Was the cause of their failure constant bickering? No, not really, the Duryea was simply not durable enough for the road conditions. A couple of years later, in 1901, pioneering automaker Alexander Winton attempted to drive one of his own cars from San Francisco to New York. The deserts of Nevada stopped him in his tracks.

Alexander Winton on Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains

The downfall of those early attempts was the roads themselves, or, to be more precise, the lack of them. There were fewer than 200 miles of paved roads in the entire country in 1900 and most of them were in cities, not out in the hinterlands. The rest of the country was criss-crossed by an uncoordinated patchwork of dirt roads that turned into deeply rutted mud bogs at the first sign of rain. Trains, not the primitive cars or motorcycles of the day, were the primary means of long distance travel, and there were over 200,000 miles of track, including five transcontinental routes, to carry people from sea to shining sea.

Will Robinson of the Washington Bicycle Club riding down the steps of the US Capitol. Do not try this at home.

But the invention of the safety bicycle in the mid-1800s began a sea change in personal mobility that still echoes today. Before the safety bicycle, the predominant bicycle style was the ungainly penny farthing (aka "high wheel" or "ordinary") with one giant wheel up front and one tiny wheel out back. The front wheel was huge because there was no gearing - the pedals were attached directly to the front axle - so a bigger front wheel enabled a higher top speed. But this design required acrobat-like dexterity and coordination for getting on and off the bike and the high seat made unexpected falls to earth quite painful, limiting its appeal. With two equal-sized wheels, pneumatic tires, pedals and chain driving the rear wheel, the safety bicycle allowed riders to place their feet on the ground. This simple ergonomic tweak proved to be a game changer and, in a rare case of truth in advertising, the safety bicycle was significantly safer too.

Penny farthing (left) and safety bicycle (right)

And the safety bicycle was a huge success, a revolution on the scale of the iPhone. By 1900 a million safety bicycles were being sold each year by now-iconic brands like Schwinn in the United State, Bianchi in Italy, Raleigh in England, and countless others. Millions flocked to them because they were cheaper than owning a horse[1] and they looked like fun.

The Victor ‘Flyer"‘ of 1893, the first safety bicycle produced in the United States

But when these new enthusiasts hit the roads with their safety bicycles they quickly found out how bad the roads were. “Good roads mean easy work and rapid speed; poor roads mean hard roads and slow speed; bad roads mean no riding at all,” said L.J. Bates, President, League of American Wheelmen, whose organization launched the Good Roads Movement in the late 1880s. They had over 100,000 members at the dawn of the 20th century.

And just because some people just have the idea of going fast built into them, the sudden popularity of the safety bicycle also spurred a bicycle racing boom. As the saying goes, the first bicycle race was the first time two bicycles met. And that wasn't too far from the truth. In the late 1890s, bicycle racing was as popular as baseball.

Huge crowds would gather at places like New York City’s old Madison Square Garden velodrome to watch grueling and dramatic six day races where pairs of riders would team together and vie to cover the greatest number of miles over six days.

Major Taylor

Before there was Jackie Robinson there was Major Taylor breaking the race barrier in bicycle racing, and racing clubs around the county formed to take part in this exciting new sport. They drew their membership from young men all around the country interested in this new mechanical toy, including George A Wyman.

New York Tribune, Friday, November 17, 1899

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[1] An ad for Columbia Bicycle featured a penny farthing and stated the economic benefits quite succinctly, "An ever saddled horse which eats nothing" and in 1817 German inventor Baron Karl Drais developed a wooden hobby horse "Laufmaschine", a primitive two wheeled bicycle without pedals that the rider would propel by pushing his or her feet on the ground. Drais developed the hobby horse in response to a shortage of horses.