Boston Bicycle Club

While I’m not a bicycle fan, I know that a lot of people really love to go cycling. In the United States, the recreational bicycling fad began on February 11, 1878, when the Boston Bicycle Club became the first organization for recreational cyclists. The fad caught on, and the following year, a club was also formed in Buffalo, New York, followed by a club in New York City in 1880. Soon, clubs were starting up everywhere, as middle-class participation in cycling grew. There were literally hundreds of cycling clubs formed across the United States.

Once formed, the Boston Bicycle Club organized various rides. They quicky organized events…from tricycle races to 100-mile rides. The trend caught on and less than 20 years after its founding, more than 100 cycling clubs had formed in Massachusetts alone. In fact, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, the clubs catered to rider expertise, gender, nationality and more. The early bicycles resembled what we might view as a tricycle today, with an oversized front wheel. Nevertheless, they still only had two wheels, and not the three that are found on a tricycle.

In October 1879, Boston Bicycle Club members rode an 87-mile round trip course through the city and its suburbs in an event with the Massachusetts Cycling Club. For short distances, the cyclists achieved speeds of 16 mph, according to the Boston Post. While the club was not necessarily considered an exercise club, the members did a lot of training to prepare for the different events. Of course, when you think about it, you would need to practice and train to get used to the Victorian-style penny farthings, as they are called.

Over the years, the two-wheeler evolved, and the oversized front wheel became a thing of the past, except on vintage bicycles, called Victorian Style Penny Farthings. The changes to the bicycle became a great improvement over the course of a century, thanks to several different inventors. Every so often, someone might decide to test their horses against the bicycles, such as the man in Watertown who was “driving a spirited horse engaged in a race with the riders and was beaten by Terront, the French rider, in about three-quarters of a mile,” according to the Post. It’s funny that the old “horse and buggy crowd” would feel the need to pit their horses against the bicycles. Still, you would have expected the horses to win the race and maybe they would have in a longer distance. Or maybe the horses were a little bit spooked by the contraption beside them. Either way, they lost the race that day.

In 1896, Boston highlighted the club that bore their name. The Boston Globe highlighted the work of the first club in the United States. Since then, “The name and fame of the Boston Bicycle Club has gone all over this fair land, and is spreading to foreign shores, whither some to its members have carried it.” The early bicycle clubs were great advocates for better roads that would be safer for bicyclists. When the automobile entered the scene, bicyclists would quickly find themselves caught between the road, and the cars that now occupied it with them. Many is the bicyclist that has lost his life at the hands, or wheels of a car. Of course, with the rise of automobiles early in the 20th century, the popularity of recreational cycling declined. In more recent years, bicycling as started to make a comeback, both in the exercise arena and the recreational arena.