Cycling Across America

 

In 1884, Thomas Stevens left San Francisco on a Columbia high wheeler (see yesterday’s photos) with the outrageous goal of becoming the first man to ride a bicycle across the United States. When he reached Boston, he decided to continue around the world, and soon sailed to London for the ride across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

I’m sure many people followed as the roads improved but each person had to find his/her own route; there was no official route across the U.S. until the 1970’s.

In April 1972, Ohioans Dan and Lys Burden and Greg and June Siple began their dream ride, an expedition that would carry them 18,000 miles from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina. For a year they cycled the first part -from Anchorage, Alaska to a point in southern Mexico and wrote and photographed an article about the trip that appeared in National Geographic magazine (May 1973).

En route, they conceived the idea for a bicycle tour across the United States to celebrate the nation's bicentennial in 1976, naming the event Bikecentennial. Unfortunately, Dan contracted hepatitis when the group was nearing the Mexico/Guatemala border and he and Lys had to discontinue Hemistour. But this allowed them to begin planning the TransAmerica route. By the fall of 1975, more than a dozen full-time staff members were busy creating the cross country route. More than 4,000 cyclists took part in the 1976 inaugural tours, going either from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia or the reverse of this.

Following the success of the bicentennial summer, the organization began charting additional long-distance routes for cyclists. The organization, now called Adventure Cycling, has an inventory of over 38,000 miles of bike routes. The organization is currently working with the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials to expand the routes even further.

This is all pretty amazing in these days of high speed transportation and in a country as large as the United States, but thousands on people actually cycle across the U.S. each year.