From Victory Bikes to Rail Trails (1940–1969)

Abstract

“Last June in driving into Pembroke, Canada, my nerves were suddenly set on edge by a cloud of cyclists leaving the gates of a factory,” wrote William Pierce Randel of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1942. “If in the United States workers take to the bicycle in increasing numbers, our city streets will present new traffic hazards,” continued the professor of English, “and it seems logical that certain streets should be closed to all but bicycles, which could then be excluded from other streets.”

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

—Bertrand Russell