The Process of History

This year saw the 40th anniversary of the first Repack race in Fairfax California.

I’m astonished about how many claims and counter claims that are circling around the ‘net about who did what, especially with people that weren’t directly involved with the folks in Marin.

Some of the people have taken it upon themselves to publicly attack Charlie Kelly.

A little while ago I wrote an IM to CK via Facebook and this is a transcription of our exchanges:

“Obviously there a bunch of ninnyhammers coming out of the woodwork saying, “Oh, I was riding bikes on Tam in ’59 so I can say I invented the mountain bike” or whatever.

We also know that there were progenitors to the modern mountain bike (the off-road bike races in Coconino Arizona in the 1890s, the use of bicycles by scouts during the Boer War, Buffalo Soldiers, American troops used bikes for messengers during the Spanish American War, WWI) but they were all preexisting designs that seemed to have been little changed from their civilian counterparts.

Joe Breeze wrote a great piece for the MTB Hall of Fame about Velo Cross Parisien that were organizing modified offload cycling events during the fifties and the Rough Stuff Fellowship in Britain were doing similar things during the same time.

Of course in the US John Finley Scott was making his own “woodie bikes” during the early fifties.

The late Jeff Archer also had some interesting one-off bikes that were made during the Seventies but they obviously didn’t amount to anything other than being an interesting historic curiosity.

Correct me if I’m wrong but my take on the matter is that key difference between what you, Gary, Greg, and Joe did was to design then build a new frame and fork from the ground up specifically for off-road riding.

The other big difference is that you, Gary and Tom started making bikes in large enough numbers to start spurring copycat bikes. Lastly, the one thing that separates you guys and some guy wandering around the woods by themselves on a bike is you have documentation, witnesses, hard evidence such as early modified clunkers and photographic proof. Without documentation, witnesses, physical or photographic evidence you don’t have anything”.

CK: "The story is a lot more complicated than "invented the mountain bike." the social and mechanical context had a lot to do with the inception of the sport".

It reminds me of when I was trying to do research on the 29"ers and there were a lot of claims and counterclaims and even people claiming that they were involved that actually weren't or couldn't prove it.

There were guys from “x” company and “y” bikes  saying they were there etc., etc., etc. but weren't.

It took a lot of time and cross checking and follow through interviews and even then I still have some lingering doubts about some of the claims. I also can't say what I did was definitive but if anyone wants to pick up where I left off I'm fine with it because I'm exhausted about talking about 29"ers.

A couple of years ago I did an interview with William Savage who did the movie “Klunkers” about his research into the subject of the early years of mountain biking. He said he said that there were a lot of people that were involved with the early days and while he did try to reach out to a lot of early clunker crowd, not everyone wanted to talk.

Willam’s experience mirrors my own because I reached out to a lot of people in order to get their side of a particular story and while some people were extremely generous with their time other people were less than forthcoming.

Perhaps we should start to look at what history is, that it’s a process, not an end in of itself.

Science is the same way, as new information comes about and if it corrects a particular theory we should be willing to embrace it.



I'm sure that there were pockets of folks all over the US, or Canada, or Europe, or wherever that were probably doing something similar to what the Marin crowd were doing in the mid seventies but proof is needed in order to substantiate claims and counterclaims.




A while ago I was on a ride and I was asked by two riders how long had I been mountain biking. I said my brother and I started modifying our bikes and riding them off road back in the late seventies. That said, neither one of us have claimed we invented anything. We also had no idea that other people were doing something similar hundreds of miles away during the same time period.

When I finally saw my first "mountain bike" in the very early eighties I thought to myself "What's the big deal, we've been doing that all ready". 

That said, however, we can't all upon any witnesses or produce photographic evidence of what we were doing but we're happy to have had this shared experience and have since moved on with the rest of our lives.