The History of Mountain Bike

The history of mountain bike was not really clear.

There was a believe that the first mountain bike was invented by Buffalo Soldiers, a turn-of-the-century infantry who customized bicycles to carry gear over rough terrain. They rode from Missoula, Montana, to Yellowstone and back, an arduous 800 miles in 1896. Their mission was to test the bicycle for military use in mountainous terrain.

There was another believe that it was a group 0f 20 young bicyclists from the outskirts of Paris, who between 1951 and 1956 developed a sport that was remarkably akin to present-day mountain biking. These riders juiced up their French 650-B bikes with an extraordinary degree of technical sophistication.

Some believe that it was John Finley Scott who was probably the first mountain bike enthusiast in the United States. In 1953 he built what he called a “ Woodsie Bike”, using a Schwinn World diamond frame, balloon tires, flat handlebars, derailleur gears, and cantilever brakes. John was more than twenty years ahead of his time, and while he remained an off-road cycling enthusiast, at the time there were not many others who shared his passion.

Another believe, the first successful high quality fat-tire bicycle was built in Marin County, California by Joe Breeze, who with others rode down the rocky trails of nearby My Tamalpais. They used balloon-tire one-speed clunkers from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s to descend these trails with coaster brakes. In that pursuit, one of these trails got the name "Repack" because one descent was enough to vaporize the bike's grease, requiring the hub to be re-packed.

The Mountain Bike Hall of Fame believes that the inception of mountain biking needed to be a continuous series of events that connected with one another as opposed to an isolated incident. Another example, in the early 1970s there were a band of cyclists, The Cupertino Riders, aka. the Morrow Dirt Club, from Cupertino California, 75 miles south of Marin, who were modifying their bikes. They were grafting thumbshift-operated derailleurs and motorcycle lever-operated drum brakes to their klunkers to help them get up and down the south bay hills. They competed against some future hall-of-famers at a Marin County cylcecross race in late 1974, where their technology was noticed.