Wheel Fever: How Wisconsin Became a Great Bicycling State

Amazon.com Price: $24.95 (as of 03/05/2019 03:37 PST- Details)

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Description

On rails-to-trails bike paths, city streets, and winding country roads, the bicycle seems ubiquitous in the Badger State. Yet there’s a complex and fascinating history in the back of the popularity of biking in Wisconsin—one that until now has never been told. Meticulously researched through periodicals and newspapers, Wheel Fever traces the story of Wisconsin’s first “bicycling boom,” from the velocipede craze of 1869 through the “wheel fever” of the 1890s. It was once right through this the most important period that the sport Wisconsinites know and adore first took shape. From the start it has been defined by a rich and steadily impassioned debate over who must be allowed to ride, where they could ride, and even what they could wear. 
 Many early riders embraced the bicycle as a solution to the age-old problem of how to get from here to there in the quickest and easiest way conceivable. Yet for every supporter of the “poor man’s horse,” there were others who wanted to keep the rights and privileges of riding to an elite set. Women, the working class, and people of color were steadily left in the back of as middle- and upper-class white men benefitted from the “masculine” sport and all-male clubs and racing events began to shape the scene. While bikes became more affordable and accessible, a culture defined by inequality helped create bicycling in its own image, and these limitations continue to haunt the sport today.
Wheel Fever is about the origins of bicycling in Wisconsin and why those origins still matter, but it’s also about our continuing fascination with all things bicycle. From “boneshakers” to high-wheels, standard models to racing bikes, tandems to tricycles, the book is lushly illustrated with never-before-seen images of early cycling, and the people who rode them: bloomer girls, bicycle jockeys, young urbanites, and unionized workers.
Laying the foundations for a much-beloved recreation, Wheel Fever challenges us to consider anew the democratic possibilities that animated cycling’s early debates.

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