Today, cyclists are widely seen as secondary road users in the United States, with the design of many roads hostile to their very presence. That’s why it may be surprising that cyclists were an important part of the formation of roads as we know them in the United States.
When cycling exploded onto the scene with the improvement of the velocipede in the 1860s, one of the primary impediments to riding was road conditions. From this impediment the League of American Wheelmen (L.A.W.), which was founded in 1880, transformed from a social club for cyclists into the foremost campaigners for improving the nation’s roads [1].
Perhaps due to its dangers, early cycling magazines were filled with insurance ads like this. Wheel (New York, N.Y). New York: F. Jenkins, 1880, (p.9) v.5, no.15. Digitally available at Digital Collections.
This campaign for better roads would come to be known as “The Good Roads Movement,” and many of its key phases can be traced through the Northwestern University Transportation Library’s collections.
A cyclist succumbing to the hazards of Chicago cycling. Wheelman (Boston, Mass.). Boston, Massachusetts: [The Wheelman Company], 1882, (p. 117). Transportation Library Special Collections. Digitally available at Hathi Trust.
Concerns about road conditions appear early in L.A.W.’s publications. During their third annual meeting in 1882 in Chicago “roads proved a trial of skill, of nerve, and of temper” [2]. Almost every early issue of their magazine also has illustrations of cyclists falling off their vehicles in “headers.”
Wheelman (Boston, Mass.). Boston, Massachusetts: [The Wheelman Company], 1883, (p. 92). Transportation Library Special Collections. Digitally available at Hathi Trust.
L.A.W. was “not organized for the purpose of exercising political power” [3], but its political organizing potential was recognized early. When a bill came before the Ohio legislature that would ban cyclists from highways, L.A.W. successfully lobbied against its passage. Early incidents such as these made L.A.W. members realize that they had a heretofore “unknown but evidently considerable political power” [4].
L.A.W. took that underutilized political power and decided to appeal to an unlikely ally: farmers.
“Public prejudice,” especially from rural citizens, was written off as an obstacle to the “progress of the wheel” [5]. Many farmers distrusted cyclists, who tended to be from urban areas, and whose newfangled devices scared farmers’ horses (as can be seen in illustrations from board pieces of Bikee: a novel and very amusing game held in the Transportation Library).
Bikee : A Novel and Very Amusing Game. London: C.W. Faulkner & Co., 1902.
So, L.A.W. began a campaign to appeal to farmers. “A bad road, you see, is an expensive thing,” states an 1891 L.A.W. pamphlet titled The Gospel of Good Roads: A Letter to the American Farmer.
Potter, Isaac B. The Gospel of Good Roads : A Letter to the American Farmer. New York: [The League of American Wheelmen], 1891. Digitally available on Hathi Trust.
Their main argument was that muddy and impassable roads posed a significant obstacle for farmers hoping to deliver crops to market. Many other publications echoed this appeal to farmers. Farmers, who were already aware of the bad condition of many U.S. roads, eventually joined up with L.A.W. and form a concentrated political force for “Good Roads.”
As America’s relationship with transportation changed, so did the Good Roads Movement. What was once led by cyclists became a movement dominated by farmers and, eventually, one associated with automobiles. L.A.W.’s membership fell from a peak of 102,326 members in 1898 to only 8,292 in 1902, and with that came a fall in its influence [6].
Material in the Transportation Library on the Good Roads Movement from after 1900 is almost entirely focused on rural Americans. For example, the publication Illinois Highways (digitally available on Hathi Trust) provides a look at improvements across Illinois, and documents the complex responses to road laws from farmers in 1914, revealing that the movement was not a united front.
Archer Ave. in Cook County being paved as part of the Good Roads Movement. Illinois Highways. Springfield, Ill: State Highway Dept., 1914. Transportation Library Periodicals.
As the movement grew, it also spread abroad. The 1924 Good Roads Movement — North Carolina is a scrapbook documents a visit of officials from South and Central American countries to North Carolina, specifically for the purpose of learning about its roads. Some road organizations in Canada still use the “Good Roads” moniker even today.
Upham, Charles M. Good Roads Movement–North Carolina. Raleigh, North Carolina: [Charles M. Upham], 1924. Transportation Library Special Collections.
The Good Roads Movement was successful in securing funding for roads and in coalition building, though the coalitions were often not a united front. This movement can be traced through the Transportation Library’s materials, either to explore new avenues of its impact and formation, or simply to learn more about how roads have been shaped differently over time. And L.A.W. continues on to this day, now known as the League of American Bicyclists, and the founders of Bike to Work Day in the U.S. which takes place on May 17 each year.
Good Roads rhetoric endured long after the early era of cycling, and even made its way into wartime bond advertising during World War 2. Kulash, Damian J. Good Roads Pave the Way to Victory. Barcus, Kindred & Co., 1940. Transportation Library Special Collections.
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WORKS CITED
- Gregory C. Lisa, “Bicyclists and Bureaucrats: The League of American Wheelmen and Public Choice Theory Applied,” Georgetown Law Journal 84, no. 2 (December 1995): 375.
- Wheelman (Boston, Mass.). [The Wheelman Company], (p. 117) v. 1 n. 1 1882.
- Wheelman (Boston, Mass.). [The Wheelman Company], (p. 98) v. 2 no. 2 1882.
- Wheelman (Boston, Mass.). [The Wheelman Company], (p. 99) v. 2 no. 2 1882.
- Wheel (New York, N.Y). [ Jenkins], (p. 3) January 4, 1884.
- Gregory C. Lisa, “Bicyclists and Bureaucrats: The League of American Wheelmen and Public Choice Theory Applied,” Georgetown Law Journal 84, no. 2 (December 1995): 376.