1904South Dakota, 1904. They ped-

aled slowly under a blazing prairie sun, their water long since used up. They no lon-ger had any clear idea if they were on the right trail or

not, nor did it matter. All that mattered was survival. Finally, overcome with weakness, they stacked the bicycles together for what little shade they could provide and lay down with no hope left.

How did a couple of young men, 19 and 20 years old, come to be in such a predicament in the first place? Blame it on the lure of adventure. Clarence M. Darling and Claude C. Murphey had fantasized for some time about making a trip around the U.S. but had not settled on a form of transportation. Bicycling would be the most flexible and daring method of travel, but the lack of good roads in the country in 1904 would have made such a journey a trial as well as an adventure. The choice was made when they got wind of a wager that it would be impos-sible for anyone to make a circuit of the United States by bicycle within a period of 18 months, touching on all 45 states, four territories (Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Indian Territory), and the District of Columbia. If successful, the prize would be $5,000, the equivalent of $125,000 in today’s money. Certain stipula-tions were made, the chief one being that

the challenger must start with no cash and earn traveling money only through the sale of a small souvenir. The boys chose to carry a supply of small aluminum pin trays inscribed with information about their trip.

May 2, 1904, found the two wheel-

men in front of the Otsego Hotel in their hometown of Jackson, Michigan, at 5:45 AM, being cheered on by a crowd of well-wishers. Their bikes had arrived from the factory only a few days before and were described as “heavy roadsters”, with 22-inch frames, coaster brakes, and gears of “84 2-3.” They weighed 28 pounds, but after loading repair tools, extra clothing, and a small portable typewriter, the total weight was 75 pounds each. The boys car-ried no camping gear, very little food, and only one canteen each as their plan was

to sleep in farmhouses, telegraph stations, barns and the like, and to purchase what they needed as they traveled. Darling also carried a Kodak camera. Their gear was stowed mainly in canvas frame bags.

The wagon roads along the route were often so sandy or muddy that their only option was to fol-low the rail lines. Although they could often ride along-side them, they also spent a good deal of time walk-ing. Several times, especially in the South, the mud was so thick and sticky that they had to carry the bikes while slogging through the gumbo. Mechanical issues also plagued them as the bad roads caused a lot of wear and tear on the bikes, including a few broken frames that need-ed repair. Conflict with other vehicles was not unknown in 1904 as the duo found out when they received a stern

and loud lecture, mostly in German, from a farmer in a buggy who felt very strongly that bicycles should not be allowed on the roads.

The first part of their trip took them through Chicago to the Dakotas. The drink-ing water throughout western Minnesota and the Dakotas left a lot to be desired. It was either alkali water or rainwater, the wells being saline and bitter. The area around Minneapolis had provided par-ticularly easy cycling since the local wheel-men’s association had created bicycle paths

Around the United States by Bicycle

b y b o b M a r r

The Start • May 2, 1904

The Finish • August 11, 1905

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to all the towns in a 50-mile radius. The roads in South Dakota were very good as well, and Darling and Murphey made the longest daily ride of their entire trip, 112 miles, from Redfield to Mitchell, where they arrived in time for the Corn Festival.

Bonesteel, South Dakota, provided some entertainment in the form of a land rush. The government had just opened a part of

the Rosebud Reservation to homesteading, and thousands of prospective homestead-ers were lined up, waiting. The boys were told by several locals that the old Valentine Trail, which went through the reservation, would be easy to follow and would save them 100 miles of bad roads to Nebraska, so they set out in good spirits. Unfortunately, the reservation was less populated than they had been led to believe, and the trail was far from obvious. After a series of guesstimated turns, they ran out of food and water and ended up nearly passed out on the prairie, as I described at the begin-ning of this story. They were saved by a passing horseman who carried them back to his cabin, where he gave them food and water. They recovered enough to continue a day later, but without his assistance they might have died on the spot.

In Denver they had their bikes over-hauled and bought some camping gear for the trip over the Rockies. They followed what is probably now US 285 from Denver toward Leadville but was then a wagon road carved out of the mountains. The last pass before Leadville was Mosquito Pass, 13,700 feet high, which the boys found

to be in about the same condition as it is today. It took them five hours to travel the seven miles from the base of the pass to the summit on a path that was extremely steep and rocky. Toward the top of the pass, they were treated to a mile or so of sloppy hike-a-bike through the snow.

The ride from there to the Montana bor-der was relatively uneventful but does illus-

trate the changes that have been made in the landscape in 100 years. Leaving Pocatello (1904 population 6,000, 2010 population 54,000), they passed through the Snake River sagebrush desert, which they described as being 50 miles of desolate waste. Today an aerial photo shows extensive irrigated agri-culture throughout the area.

After some more cycling through moun-tain and desert, the adventurers arrived in Butte, Montana, “a city of 40,000 souls, an overgrown mining camp, in which gam-bling seemed to run riot.” Heading north, they passed through Goldcreek, a town

consisting of a railway station, general store, and saloon. Stopping in the saloon to get warm, the boys got a good look at typical Montana cowboys of 1904: bear-skin chaps with the hair on the outside; blue flannel shirts; low-crowned, broad-

brimmed felt hats; red bandanas; belts full of cartridges and Colt pistols. From Bearmouth the wagon road passed through Hell Gate Canyon to Missoula, a town of 6,000, where they learned that they would have to follow the Northern Pacific railroad tracks to Spokane, 272 miles away, as there were no through roads. In Idaho they had the novel experience of cycling around and through some forest fires, once hav-ing to dash down a 300-yard stretch where the road was still covered with smoking, smoldering debris. They suffered only a burned jacket and singed eyebrows. Along this stretch, they also had to pass over sev-eral high trestles, something that was often necessary along their route. Unfortunately there was no pedestrian walkway on the trestles. If they spotted a train coming, they sometimes had to climb down to a support beam and hold their bicycles over the edge until the train passed (and I thought riding a road with no shoulder was scary!)

The route past Spokane posed no par-ticular problems, but on the next leg, across the Cascades, they came to a two-mile-long railroad tunnel that was guarded by a watchman. The boys resolved to try the tunnel while the watchman was asleep and were caught by a fast freight. By plas-tering themselves to the side of the tunnel, they were able — by a margin of three inches, to keep from being run over, but the smoke and gas of the three coal-fired engines forced them back out of the tunnel. After consulting with the watchman, and for a small price, he agreed to guide them through, although it was “agin the rules.”

Leaving Tacoma, they had the pleasure of crossing “the longest, highest, and only exclusive bicycle bridge in the world.” Built in 1896 by the wheelmen of Tacoma, this bridge was in service for over 25 years. They traveled the rest of Washington most-ly on plank roads, which were laid down between towns due to the amount of rainfall

in that part of the state, and the splinters gave them many a flat to patch.

Crossing the Sierra Nevadas toward Susanville, California, they found them-selves in a bit of a predicament, having run out of food and water in a very sparsely

inhabited region. Fortunately, they came across a farm. Unfortunately, no one was at home, and after refilling their canteens from the pump, they decided to enter the house through an unlocked window to find food, intending, of course, to pay for it. The farm-er’s return put them in an awkward posi-tion, but he turned out to be a very pleas-ant Southern gentleman, originally from Tennessee. After they apologized profusely, he invited them to stay the night. His name was Shird Eldridge, and he was one of the local pioneers. An 1897 Sierra Club Bulletin mentions his dairy farm as a place “where good accommodations will be found.”

In Reno they stayed as guests of the Reno Wheelmen’s Club, membership 600. It had a clubhouse with reading rooms, a large gym-nasium, and a swimming pool. They passed through Truckee, “… truly a cesspool, and headquarters for gamblers and criminals,” and entered a continuous stretch of 35 miles of tunnels and snow sheds that covered the railroad tracks over the summit of the Sierras. This made for some of the most nervewracking riding of the trip because there was little room to move over and let the trains pass. In San Francisco, they admired the Golden Gate (sans bridge) and took in the sights. They were unimpressed with Los Angeles but noted that one section of the city was covered in oil rigs to tap the “most unlimited supply of oil.”

Their next task was to cross the Colorado Desert from Blanning, California, to Yuma, Arizona. They had been warned that there was nothing but uninhabited desert all the way to western Texas, nearly 1,000 miles, so they were forced to follow the rail line all that distance. Looking at this route in Google Earth, it is amazing to see the difference that irrigation has made in 100 years. Indio, California, current population over 76,000, was described by the boys as consisting of a telegraph station, depot, water tank, and coal sheds. The most difficult part of this leg of the trip was the lack of services. For hun-dreds of miles at a time, there was literally no place to buy supplies. The boys depended on the kindness of telegraph operators to either give or sell them food to augment what they could carry. Water at least, was no prob-lem as each telegraph station had a cistern. They stopped for a couple of days of rest in Tucson, which “with a population of 12,000, is the largest city in Arizona.”

The wheelmen enjoyed good weath-er crossing Texas, but heading north, the weather turned more typical for January, and they had to deal with snow and cold,

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Small souvenir. The boys sold 3½” x 5” aluminum “ash or card receiver” trays for 15 cents.

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Arriving in Detroit, they observed, “Without a doubt Detroit is one of the cleanest and best-paved cities in the United States.”

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including sub-zero temperatures in Kansas. Most of the travel through this area was on the train tracks. They could be fairly certain of finding a warm place to stay at telegraph stations, depots, and other railroad build-ings. They fantasized that should they catch the poet who wrote “Beautiful, Beautiful Snow,” they would kill him on the spot. Missouri and Arkansas did not impress the travelers. They thought the whole region rather backward and primitive.

The Deep South was notable mostly for rain and mud and, farther to the east, sand. Most of the wagon roads were very primi-tive, and much of the land was swampy to begin with. At one point, in crossing over a bridge flooded to a depth of four feet or so, Darling inadvertently stepped off the edge and was rescued by Murphey, but he lost his jacket and soaked the wooden rims of his wheels, which subsequently warped and required replacement.

Turning north again, they went to Chattanooga and then on to Atlanta, Georgia, passing numerous Civil War bat-tlefields on the way. At Ringgold, Georgia, they spent the night with an ex-Confed-erate general who entertained them with accounts of the battles he had taken part in and gave them a bayonet and some bullets. They were impressed with Atlanta, “the Chicago of the South,” with its “skyscrap-

ers” of 14 to 17 stories.Traveling up the Atlantic seaboard

toward Washington, DC, proved to be fairly smooth riding, and although they were forced to ride the rail lines quite a bit on account of sand and rain, there were

many more rideable sections of road. From Washington to New York City, there were very good roads so the boys were able to ride at top speed. In New York, they were again impressed by the skyscrapers, the highest, Park Row, was 32 stories.

The ride continued over mostly good roads, except for some hilly, sandy sections in Rhode Island. Once in Maine, the wet sand of the beach provided good riding for many miles until they arrived in Portland. Turning west toward home, they had only a dollar left and were getting worried about being able to fulfill the terms of the wager (their souvenir trays were not selling well at all in New England). Finally, after two days without food, they were forced to give up and work for their meal at a small restaurant in Burlington, Vermont. The wager having been lost, the dejected duo had money sent to them so that they could finish the trip.

After paying a visit to Niagara Falls, the boys traveled along Lake Erie on the Lake Shore Turnpike. Passing through Akron and Canton, Ohio, they eventually followed the Ohio River from Wellsville to Martin’s Ferry, which was across from their West Virginia checkpoint of Wheeling. They noted that there were many potteries along the river as well as some huge iron and steel plants. They found Wheeling to be “a most disgusting city, dirty, narrow streets which are poorly paved.” Crossing back over the Ohio River, they headed for Columbus

along the National Pike, now US 40. From Columbus they rode south through Cincinnati; Frankfort, “a town of but a few thousand inhabitants;” and Louisville, where they crossed over to Indiana.

Arriving in Detroit, they observed, “Without doubt Detroit is one of the clean-est and best-paved cities in the United States. An air of neatness hangs about

everything.” Two days later, after a delay caused by Darling’s coaster brake break-ing into several pieces, they arrived back in front of the Otsego Hotel in Jackson, having traveled 13,407 miles in one year, three months, nine days, six hours, and 45 minutes.

Although the bet was lost, there is no doubt that Murphey and Darling gained an incredible prize through their adven-ture. They got to see the country, meet people of all walks of life, experience new fantastic landscapes, and do it all at bicycle speed. Fortunately for us, 100 years later, this opportunity still exists in the form of bikepacking and adventure cycling. The boys had to watch for trains; we have to watch for cars. They had to find food and shelter on the trail, and so do we. They had the adventure of a lifetime, and that adven-ture still remains for all of us to share. As Freddie Mercury so elegantly put it, “Get on your bikes and ride!”

Bob Marr lives with his wife Janet and two cats in a log cabin in the woods of northern Michigan. One of his favorite pastimes is riding his mountain bike along the roads and trails near his home. This year, he hopes to complete the TourDivide along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.

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Life saver. On the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the boys lost their way. The last of their water gone, they came to an exhausted halt. A local Indian rescued them and brought them to his cabin where they recovered before riding south into Nebraska.

Pioneer mountain bikers. A shortcut taken in the mountains between Wenatchee and Ellensburg, Washington, turned into a nightmare of thick forest, narrow trails, and steep climbs.

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