The first bicycle appeared on the streets of St. Louis in 1878, under the management of Johnny Blow. The St. Louis Club was organized in 1879 and interest in cycling in St. Louis grew rapidly. The Missouri and Eurota clubs were formed in 1882 and the Eclipse and Rambler clubs the following year. The most prominent of these was the Ramblers, whose members established a clubhouse on Olive Street. In 1885 the Ramblers sponsored a racing tournament in St. Louis in which English Wheelman and the leading Americans competed. Although it attracted a great deal of interest and won many friends for the sport, it was not a financial success and the Ramblers found themselves burdened with a debt of $1,500. In November 1886, they conducted the first Century run in the west. Soon it became the ambition of every rider to do a “Century” or one hundred miles of pedaling in a day. Sixteen riders participated in the first run and all but one rider, whose wheel “buckled” under him soon after the start, completed the run. The actual riding time over country roads was eleven and thirty four minutes.

Despite the growing popularity of cycling, the Ramblers were forced to give up their clubhouse because of their financial debt. They did not disband, however, until February, 1887, when they learned that St. Louis had been awarded the eighth annual League of American Wheelmen meet. The Ramblers tried to infuse new life into their organization in order to assist the Missouri Division in handling the Meet in proper style, but most of the members felt unequal to the task. Plans for entertaining the delegates were then turned over to the vigorous Missouri Club, which owned a clubhouse at Thirty-First Street, south of Olive Street, with a completely equipped gymnasium.

With approximately 10,000 members, the League of American Wheelmen, founded at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1880, was a thriving organization in 1887. Organized to ascertain, defend and protect the rights of the Wheelmen, it was made up of state divisions which had their own constitutions and elected their own officers. The head of each division was known as the chief consul. A small initiation fee and annual dues of one dollar were required for membership and official brown uniforms. Could be ordered for fifteen dollars. The Missouri Division, organized in St. Louis in 1881 and reorganized in 1885, had a membership of two hundred forty-four in 1887.

Almost five thousand dollars was subscribed by St. Louisians for the purpose of entertaining the visiting wheelmen and everything was furnished free of charge. Another attraction was the world championship road race at Clarksville, sponsored by the American Wheelman, and scheduled to be held immediately after the League Meet. L.S.C. Ladish had launched the “American Wheelman”, a bicycling monthly magazine of national reputation, in St. Louis in 1885. In 1886 Ladish, through his magazine, sponsored a fifty-mile race at Clarksville, which attracted nation-wide attention. Three of the entrants in this race had broken the world’s record.

The League of American Wheelmen delegates from Massachusetts and New York arrived by special train on Thursday, May 19, a day before the official opening of the Meet. As a gay crowd passed through St. Louis Union Station the chorus, “On the bi-bi, The c-y-cy, On the bicycle,” echoed throughout the building. Some wore long dusters described as “falling low enough to kiss the blooming calf that swelled out the long hose,” others topped their riding uniforms with plug hats, while others wore regular attire. Some chose to ride their bicycles from the Union Station to the Lindell Hotel, headquarters of the Meet. The following description shows that the ride was not routine:

At first the jolting of the granite agitated the visitors, but when they got used to the regularity of it they felt quite at home. Edgar Floyd-Jones, who led the Pennsylvania delegation, had heard there were some hill-climbers in the group and ran them down the Walnut Street grade, which descended from Eleventh Street. It wasn’t much of a grade and the St. Louis party took it with brakes off dancing joyfully over the pieces of macadam which stuck up. One of the Pennsylvania hill-climbers said that way of taking a hill paralyzed him. But everyone rode the slippery car tracks with ease and grace and brought up safely at the hotel.

A fifty-foot streamer across the front announced the Lindell Hotel as the headquarters of the Meet. At the reception held that evening at the Missouri Club for the early arrivals, wheelmen promenaded the grounds, lighted by Japanese lanterns, and danced with women guests in the gymnasium.

The Meet opened the next day with a board meeting at Entertainment Hall in the Exposition Building. Although three hundred visitors had arrived and many St. Louisans were participating, only a handful attended the board meeting. The general meeting, which convened immediately afterward, was the shortest on record, lasting only fifteen minutes. The business of the Meet was then concluded and nothing remained but the fun.

Some of the men left for a spin on the De Soto Road with the attention of meeting the other delegates at Montesano Springs, near Kimmswick. An excursion on the steamer Charles P. Chouteau was made to the springs in the afternoon by some one hundred wheelmen and an almost equal number of guests. The trip was enlivened by dancing, fancy riding, and a display of fireworks on the bluffs just outside St. Louis as the party returned.

On Saturday morning three hundred wheelmen formed in line for a parade through downtown St. Louis. Because of the bad connection of the asphalt at Twenty-Eight Street, the line of the parade formed south at that point. The original intention was to turn at Pine Street and go west to Grand Avenue, but owing to the development of innumerable “cellars” in the Pine Street asphalt, the route was changed to pass from Locust Street over Twenty-Eighth to Chestnut, with its “fine” wooden paving, and hence to Grand Avenue. The parade ended at Forest Park where a picture of the group was taken and a picnic lunch served.
 

Photo taken in Forest Park

For some reason the banquet at the Lindell Hotel in the evening was delayed for two hours and it was after one o’clock in the morning before the numerous toasts were drunk in clear, cold water and the speeches ended. In the meantime the steamer Hudson had arrived at the levee and the captain paced nervously to and fro, waiting to take the crowd from the banquet to Clarksville. At last everyone was aboard and the Hudson, leaving the lights of St. Louis behind her, steamed up the Mississippi River toward Clarksville. The staterooms were filled and a solid line of cots stretched from end to end of the two hundred-foot cabin. During the night a special artist for the American Wheelmen made the rounds of the boat and sketched a few scenes.

About 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Hudson neared Clarksville and the visitors were welcomed by Whittaker and Munger, standing on the decks of the Dora, which had arrived earlier, and by Rhodes, Frazier, and McCurdy on the levee.
 

The levee was soon alive with knickerbockered men. All Clarksville was out to greet them and Clarksville girls flocked on board the Hudson, where they sang a few songs and played the piano. Many of the men tried out their wheels on the Pike County roads. There were bicycles of every kind. All the familiar makes of cranks were represented, while here and there tandems, tricyles, safeties, stars, extraordinaries, and bicylettes spun up and down. The visitors rode past substantial red-brick farm houses, little one-story toll houses, and under toll gates formed from a suspended pole. At every house, the owners, dressed in their very best, stood with smiling faces and buttonhole bouquets to welcome and passing wheelmen who might stop to cool his parched tongue with a dipper of well water or a glass of milk.

But soon the sky darkened, threatening clouds appeared, and a few big drops of rain spattered down. At first, those on the road sought temporary shelter, but later on as the rain kept falling, they made for the boat at top speed.

On Sunday evening the visitors attended special wheelmen’s services at the churches, singing the hymns so lustily that it was said the organist had to use the loud pedal constantly in order to be heard. Later in the evening they gathered on the forward deck of the Hudson and sang cycling songs to guitar accompaniment. Thirty members of the Missouri Club and ten of the Massachusetts delegation who came by train, arrived later that evening. The St. Louis, Keokuk, and Northwestern Railroad (now the Burlington) offered a special excursion rate of two dollars for the round trip.

Most of the entrants in the race were national champions. In March, L.S.C. Ladish, manager if the race, reported after a visit to Boston that a gymnasium had been set up by the Smith Manufacturing Company where Charles Franzier of Smithville, New Jersey, and A. McCurdy of Lynn, Massachusetts, trained everyday on their Stars. The Star was a lever-propelled machine with a large driving wheel at the rear and a small steering wheel in front. John Brooks, the “dark horse,” who arrived in Clarksville a few days before the race, had been training for six weeks on the steep hills of Pennsylvania. He was riding a Star, much to the surprise of those who knew that he had previously used the crank-type wheel.

Rhodes, who weighed about one hundred and eight pounds, had trained during the winter at the Boston Y.M.C.A. under C.P. Daniels and about the first of April began training on the road. Rhodes, Neilson, and Percy Stone, a St. Louis racer, made up the Overman team, sponsored by the Overman Company, manufacturers of Victors. Stone had delayed his training with the idea that a week or so of intensive training would put him in tip-top shape.

 

Whittaker, the well-known racer of the West, was the first to arrive in Clarksville. He was representing the Gormully and Jeffery Company of Chicago, manufacturers of Champions. Whittaker had lived in St. Louis in 1885 and had participated in the 1886 fifty-mile road race in Clarksville. His rides with the Rambler cycling club were famous at that time. On one attempt to coast Frisco Hill on the De Soto road, his wheel got away from him and he shouted to his companions for advice on how to stop. He was told to run into a tree, but he took to a clump of blackberry bushes instead. He had suffered a bad fall before his arrival in Clarksville and it was noted that he was much thinner, but he said that he felt “slicker than the pedal mount.” He was the general favorite in Clarksville. It was said that if he had won the race he could have asked for a Pike County farm and it would have gladly been given to him.

Ten days before the race all contestants were in Clarksville. Unfortunately for St. Louis fans Percy Stone was forced to withdraw a few days before the race and return to his home in St. Louis. He was ill and it was believed that the strenuous training into which he had plunged at the last minute had been the cause. On a trial run Frazier had received a severe cut on his leg when his Star broke as he spurted down one of the steep hills near Clarksville. Observers noted that Rhodes and Nielson took their brakes off and “rode down the hills like demons.” Their sponsor, A.H. Overman, arrived in Clarksville about a week before the race.

The League of American Wheelmen, through its Racing Board, formulated the laws and rules governing entries and conduct of the race. It had become increasingly difficult to race as a pure amateur. The majority of the entrants belonged to the class which became known as the promateur, a cross between a professional and an amateur, a promateur did not race for money prizes, but he was employed to ride and display the merits of some particular style of wheel furnished him free of charge by the manufacturer, who defrayed all his expenses while participating in the race. This method of advertising had been long employed but the participants were formerly classed as amateurs. It was reported soon after the Clarksville race that Hollingsworth could no longer race at his own expense as a pure amateur. He had resigned from the amateur league and the Pope Manufacturing Company planned to take him under its “gold-lined” wing.

The Clarksville vicinity had been chosen as the starting point because of the famous Belt Road. The Belt was described as extending seven miles northwest of Clarksville to Dover Church, three and one-half miles south to Rockford near the head of Ramsey Creek, four and one-half miles southeast to Hutt’s toll gate, and five and one-half miles northeast back to Clarksville. In the 1899 Pike County Atlas these points were listed as Calumet Post Office, Aberdeen Post Office, Turpin, and Clarksville. Approximately twenty and one-half miles in length, the Belt included portions of the Louisiana-Prairieville, Calumet, and Clarksville-Prairieville-Paynesville graveled roads. In 1851 an act of incorporation was passed for the construction of a plank road from Louisiana to Prairieville, but it was not until 1859 that the county court approved the graveling of the first five miles of the road nearest Louisiana. The Clarksville-Prairieville-Paynesville Road Company was organized in 1857 with one-half the stock subscribed by the county and the remainder by Clarksville citizens, the city of Clarksville, and farmers living along the route. The Calumet Road was laid out by a company in 1857, but after the expenditure of thirteen thousand dollars, the project was abandoned.

After the Civil War, road building gained great impetus in the county. In 1865 Pike County was granted the right by the State Legislature to dispose of, or purchase stock in any incorporated gravel, plank, or macadamized road or company in which the county owned shares of stock. The Calumet Road Company relinquished all interest in the road to the county in 1867 and the seven-mile Calumet Road which intersected the Louisiana-Prairieville Road at Dover Church was built at a cost of some twenty-six thousand dollars. It was macadamized for two and one-half miles from Clarksville and the remainder was graveled. The Louisiana-Prairieville Road was resurveyed, the gravel extended, and plans were made to build the road to Auburn in Lincoln County during this period. This road followed the main dividing ridge known as the Buffalo Trail, on which early settlers in the region located the Salt River Road. The Clarksville-Paynesville-Prairieville Road was resurveyed in 1868, improvements were made, and plans were formulated to extend farther west. To maintain the roads, toll gates were established with a toll rate of one cent a mile for a single team and one-half cents a mile for a double team. In 1867 there were more than eighty miles of gravel roads in the county. St. Louis cyclers utilized the Pike County roads for a number of years. During the 1890’s an annual Pike County tour was scheduled and as late as 1909 thirty-five cyclists came from St. Louis to Clarksville to ride on the Belt Road. Pike County was described in the roadbook of the Missouri Division of the League of American Wheelmen, published annually in the 1890’s, as the “cyclers’ paradise.”

The Belt, leading back from the Mississippi River, presented enough hills, long inclines, delightful levels, and bad spots to make the contest interesting and hazardous. Although the road between Dover and Rockford had been repaired just before the race, W.E. Hicks, editor of “Wheel Whims,” a St. Louis Post-Dispatch cycling column, who dropped in behind the contestants on his own wheel, observed that that Dover stretch was a succession of mud holes and that the gravel was heavy all along the road. He believed that no serious accidents occurred because the rain storm the night before had made the road hard, covered up the stones and allowed the wheel to take a good grip. Ned Oliver, from the Gormully and Jeffrey Company of Chicago, manufacturers of Champions, was in a state of great indignation about the road. He said, “This will be the last race on the Clarksville course, you can bet on that. It’s an outrage to ask a man to race over such a course. If we had known what the course was like we would never have entered Whittaker and he will never race on this course again as long as he is in our employ.” Overman, on the other hand, took a different view, saying he though the course was about as good as could be and that it presented a variety of road conditions. His opinion was expressed after his two men, Rhodes and Nielson, had secured a good lead and he had every reason to be congratulatory. After the race the question was also raised about the likelihood that a hundred-mile race imposed too great a strain on the participants. Editor Ladish made a vehement reply to all the criticism. He said:
A good deal of rot has been going through the rounds of the press since the race about the dangers of the hills and the terrible strain of a hundred-mile race. As a matter of fact not a header was taken on the hills that day, and as for the strain, every one of the men was out walking around an hour after the finish, and those who went…on the boat sat up singing and enjoying themselves until midnight. I have seen men a great deal worse used up after a hundred-yard sprint than any one of the men were after this race.

On Monday morning everyone on the Hudson was stirring at six o’clock, but at that time the prospects for making fast time in the race seemed slim as a heavy mist hung over the river. Wagons and buggies began to arrive in Clarksville from all directions. All work was suspended on farms and work-horses were attached to wagons stationed at good positions along the road while groups of farmers excitedly discussed the contest. Young couples, fortified by well-filled lunch baskets prepared to watch the race from buggies backed from the road. The odds at the start were against Rhodes in winning three to one, Crocker, three to one, Frazier and Brooks, four to one, and Neilson and McCurdy, six to one. Donovan, a St. Louis bookmaker, did a thriving business next to the Carroll House. Clarksville women were kept busy serving church dinners to the crowd. Street vendors hawked their wares.

The start of the race, originally set for eight a.m., was postponed over an hour because of the recent rain. By nine o’clock the sun was out and the roads were drying. Impromptu hack lines operated between town and the starting point, some two miles south. At a quarter past eight the racers walked out of the ladies’ entrance of the Carroll House dressed in tights and wrapped in blankets, and were hauled in wagons to the starting point. Whittaker was the first to arrive. Like all the boys, he was considerably battered, but he told the crowd that he “felt like a greased eel.” He had trained down to 130 pounds which he considered a good weight, but he looked worried and anxious. Frazier’s left knee was badly injured, but he thought it would “supple up.” Rhodes seemed to be the only man without a scratch. McCurdy, Frazier, and Brooks were hauled out in a slow wagon and the race was delayed even longer than planned. About three thousand persons had gathered and much difficulty was experienced in clearing a space large enough to place the men in the position which the number they drew from the grab bag had assigned them. At about 9:17 a.m. Chief Consul W.M. Brewster, head of the Missouri Divison of the Wheelmen’s League, fired his gun and every pusher gave his man a tremendous shove and off they went. Because of the steep grade the first thirty yards were run at moderate speed. A shout went up from the crowd as the men increased their pace and fought for the lead. The crowd closed in on their heels and dashed after them to the top of the hill to see them take the down grade and the level stretch beyond.

2nd Lap
 

Crocker was in the first group and kept the lead for one hundred yards when Frazier sailed passed him. Whittaker was stationed in the last group, but when Frazier passed Crocker, the “little giant” was close on his heels. At the end of the first lap, Rhodes, Neilson, and Crocker pushed up the hill together. Rhodes was a few feet ahead and of all he looked the freshest. Whittaker, almost two minutes behind the three Bostonians, looked wearied and the burning sun seemed to affect him. On the second lap, Rhodes, Neilson, and Crocker remained in the lead. Whittaker’s machine broke down at Hutt’s toll gate and he finished the lap some minutes after the first three. McCurdy passed around the corner pumping his wheel with difficulty three minutes later. He was jaded and the friends who backed him were concerned. Ashinger, who was twenty-one minutes behind all the others, dropped out at the Carroll House. On the third lap the same indomitable trio passed the Carroll House in Clarksville at 1:05 p.m. Neilson had fallen and disfigured his face, but had, in some way or another, picked himself up and caught his companions. Rhodes had suffered a fainting spell, but revived after stimulants were administered. As McCurdy reached the end of the lap more than twenty minutes later he struck a rock and tumbled. His trainer mounted him again and he was passed through town but soon gave up the contest and returned. Frazier, having lost the use of his left leg, surrendered after going halfway around the Belt on the third lap. Brooks quit after traveling about forty miles.

At 2:36 p.m. Rhodes and Neilson reached the finishing point on the fourth lap. Crocker was two minutes behind. Gulping two cups of water handed him by his trainer, he whizzed through town somewhat inspired by the urgent appeals of his friends. At the first toll gate Rhodes asked for a drink and accidentally let the dipper fall into his wheel. He was thrown to the ground, but soon remounted and overtook Nielson. A farmer was instructed to throw some water on Crocker as he passed. The man let go of the big tin bucket accidentally and Crocker was knocked from his wheel and rolled over on the ground. He was too dazed to know what hit him, but he was hustled on his wheel and was off again before he had time to ask any questions.

The Hannibal band arrived on the scene and played as the crowd waited anxiously for the finish. Many wanted to catch a glimpse of Whittaker coming first around the curve, but the opinion was that Rhodes would be the first arrival. It had been rumored that Rhodes was pulling Neilson along, since they were both Overman men, and the betting changed from even money on Rhodes to two to one in his favor. The toll gate, an eighth of a mile away, was reached. The road was hard and smooth as a floor from this point to the finish, with a slight down grade near the tape, and Neilson, with his powerful track spurt, pressed closer to Rhodes who was struggling to maintain the lead.

Clarksville Finish

There was little cheering as they neared the finish. The crowd opened and Neilson spurted into the lead. As they neared the tape Rhodes realized the race was lost. This unexpected result seemed to take all enthusiasm out of the crowd for awhile, with the exception of a few men who had snapped up odds of eight to one against Neilson, offered for a short time by the bookmaker after the men started on the last lap.

After the race it was rumored that Neilson had played a contemptible trick on Rhodes by beating him at the very last minute. But Crocker said that Neilson’s riding was wonderful from the very start. Neilson said that Rhodes didn’t do all the pacing. He added, “I pulled him up the hills. Because I passed through the town behind Rhodes, the people thought I stayed there. But I didn’t. As I had five-inch cranks, I could make the hills more easily by going up fast and so I led up the hills. I rode my race as I wanted to and because I wouldn’t go to the front when Billy (Rhodes) wanted me to was nothing against me. He wasn’t running my race.”
Neilson failed to match the previous English record of six hours, thirty-nine minutes, and five seconds, but there were other compensations. More than one thousand dollars worth of prizes were given by Clarksville citizens and manufacturing companies. Neilson received the world’s championship solid silver cup, valued at three hundred dollars, and light colored roadster, valued at one hundred forty dollars. The second place winner received prizes valued at two hundred forty dollars.

In the evening the banquet planned on board the Hudson was cancelled for lack of seating space, but a band was installed, and soon the boat was so tightly packed that it was impossible to dance. The Hudson sailed away at a late hour in the midst of the hurrahs from the shore and the sounds of “Dixie” played by the band on deck. The dramatic and colorful marathon of the Ordinaries was ended.

Riders of the day were unaware that the high-wheeled bicycle was fast becoming
obsolete. The pneumatic tire, invented in 1889 by John Boyd Dunlop of Ireland, and the introduction of the British Rover, the prototype of the modern bicycle, first marketed by Starley and Rogers in 1885, were the harbingers of better things to come in cycling.  Within a few years the Ordinary was relegated to the museum.

In commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the great Clarksville road race, another national championship bicycle race, sponsored June 23, 1962, by the Southern Pike County Community Progress Group, the Clarksville Boat Club, and the National Cycling Club, was run over the Belt Road. Forty-nine racers competed in the one hundred kilometer (62.13 miles) course. The course began at Clarksville on County Route W, joined County Route WW, then led from County Route D to County Route N, from County Route N to its intersection with State Highway 79, and returned to Clarksville on State Highway 79. A similar event was held in Clarksville on June 30, 1963. Reduced were the hazards as the riders raced their modern bicycles instead of the old high-wheelers, and reduced were the number of miles as they raced three times instead of five times around the Belt. However the most important aspect of the 1887 race remained unchanged – the enthusiasm of riders and onlookers for bicycle racing.