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Late-1800s Bike Craze Overtaken by the Auto

By Beth Whitehouse | Staff Writer

On the day papers reported the success of Mile-a-Minute Murphy, they also reported:

That a man had cycled the world on his bicycle.

That a 10-year-old boy had left Lincoln, Neb., on a bike determined to pedal 4,100 miles in 80 days.

That Patchogue was in the midst of a three-day meeting of the New York State Division of the League of American Wheelmen, which would end with a bike parade. In the late 1880s, a bicycle mania swept the country. A new type of bicycle had recently been marketed, replacing the tall, old-fashioned bikes with the huge front wheels. The new bikes were called safety bicycles because they had front and back wheels of similar size and were closer to the ground. In 1888 they got pneumatic tires.

Bicycle clubs mushroomed across Long Island. In 1897, the Long Island Rail Road ordered six baggage cars specially rigged to transport bicycles. In 1898, the LIRR published a pamphlet called ``Cyclists' Paradise,'' with maps of Island cycling paths.

By the early 1900s, the craze ended with the coming of the automobile.