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The first bicycle prototypes, popularly known as "boneshakers," were best suited to the intrepid adventurer and the avid seeker after the new-fangled. All that changed in 1888, with the invention of the pneumatic tire and the creation of a machine that anyone could learn to ride without undue risk or discomfort. The bicycle's promise of personal, self-propelled locomotion was irresistible, and the bicycle craze of the 1890s became a worldwide phenomenon, one in which Eurekans participated in an all-out fashion.

And why wouldn't they, when their city was already outfitted with a system of paved bike-ways: the streets may have been rough in 1895, but Eureka's network of twelve-foot-wide wooden sidewalks provided the perfect surface for everyone's new pastime. Downtown Eureka was awash in bicycles and almost every downtown business sported a bicycle rack. Everyone had a bike, and everyone wanted to ride downtown. As imperiled pedestrians were knocked aside and forced into the gutters, city ordinances began springing up: first for bicycle bells, then for lights. Inevitably, city leaders passed an ordinance banning bicycles on downtown sidewalks, setting K Street on the east and Fifth Street on the south as the boundary lines.

This will strike us as a perfectly reasonable measure, but in 1895 it met with almost universal opposition: no one wanted their bike-riding curtailed. Finally, at a well-attended council meeting, Mayor C.J. Stafford asked for the help of every person present to enforce the bicycle ordinance, but with an unforeseen result. The very next day, Lawrence F. Puter and Sam I. Allard captured Mayor Stafford himself in the act of breaking the ordinance.

"It was such a huge joke to the two," writes Will Speegle in an Old Timer article collected at the Historical Society, "that they hauled the mayor before Police Judge J. M. Melendy who assessed the chief officer of the city with a fine of five dollars for the infraction."

Bicycles in Eureka

There must have been a unique spirit of joy in the air just then, with almost everyone in town experiencing the sudden freedom and exhilaration of children on their first new Christmas bicycles.

Naturally, every enterprising business proprietor in town wanted to get in on the rip-roaring bicycle business. Shops heretofore proudly selling groceries and dry goods now began advertising as bicycle dealers, mentioning their original merchandise only as an afterthought. For example, A. Cottrell, at the corner of Fifth and H Streets, placed ads featuring the "Defiance Bicycle" in large bold letters, noting in tiny print at the end, "I still continue to furnish groceries to my customers as usual."

There were even two bicycle factories in Eureka in the 1890's. E. H. Burnett's was located at 613 Second Street, and the Eureka Bicycle Factory at 322 Second Street. The average cost of a bicycle was about $80, with the Ideal, Hartford, and Defiance priced from $40 to $85, and the Columbia, Rambler, and Cleveland priced at an even $100. Looking though the1895-96 daily papers and the city directory, I counted at least 16 establishments where bicycles could be purchased in Eureka alone.

Indoor riding arenas and lessons were another distinctive feature of the day. L.L Ayers Fashion Livery Stables at 4th and G Streets added Cyclery to its name in 1895, and began the "Ayers Cycling Academy," with an ad by Ayers reading: "Mine is the largest, best ventilated hall in town. I give personal instruction and have competent help. 50 cents an hour. Engagement made to suit convenience of ladies. Electric light at night…Ladies' Parlor entrance on G St."

That the ad is addressed primarily to women does not, of course, mean that women were any less agile or more in need of lessons than men; consider, though, that for women of that time, encumbered by voluminous skirts as well as strict conventions of ladylike comportment, mastering the bicycle could have presented complications. It was women, indeed, who had the most to gain from the popularity of the bicycle. As they took en masse to their wheels, the first impediments to be cast aside were their floor-length skirts, quickly followed by their corsets. Susan B. Anthony stated in 1896: "The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world."

Besides Eureka's boardwalks, where did people ride in 1895? The answer turns out to be: everywhere. Cycling tours were organized by two local bicycle clubs, the Humboldt Wheelmen and the Eureka Road Club. Wheelman Will Speegle recalls that trips of 25 to 30 miles were routinely embarked upon to the Mad River, Hookton, Table Bluff, Southern Humboldt, Salmon Creek, Essex, and Korbel. In a 1988 Humboldt Historian article, Barbara Canepa Saul writes: "The Tour of the Unknown Coast bicycle tour may have had its origins in September of 1895, when it was reported that 'Wheelmen Soule, Wells, Janssen, and Littlefield of Eureka arrived in that city last Saturday from their trip "around the block" via Petrolia, Shelter Cove, Garberville and Scotia, the distance traveled from the time they left Swauger was 192 miles.'"

Nor were Eureka women to be left behind: a July 1895 article in the Enterprise reads, "A number of young ladies in Eureka are organizing a bicycle club similar to those of the men. They will adopt a distinctive name and costume, indulge in road runs and sociables in every way."

Trips between Eureka and Arcata were common in both directions, and benefits were held to raise money for "sprinkling the roads" on this popular thoroughfare. A newspaper entry in the "Susie Baker Fountain Papers" states that the Eureka Wheelmen rode to Arcata on Sunday mornings and circled the Plaza, executing "a well-learned drill," which may have consisted of formations and possibly even bike tricks, as one Wheelman, Rodney Burns, was said to be proficient in trick-riding and "antics." In another entry we find that on April 27, 1895, "Mr. Vidy and Miss Edwards of Eureka rode to Arcata on a tandem in one hour and seven minutes." This timetable would have interested readers, as would the indication of a new romance.

With the arrival of the automobile over the next two decades, Eureka's downtown bike racks disappeared, as did her bicycle factories. The 1913 directory contains a full page of auto-related businesses and only one bicycle listing. In today's world of indispensable cars and highways, it is a wonder and a delight to read in an 1896 Munsey's Magazine that at one time "rapid transit" was envisioned as "elevated bicycle paths." History is known to repeat itself, usually for the worse, but perhaps, as the 21st century asserts itself, a Eureka filled with bicycles-which were once promoted as perfect for "health, pleasure, and utility"-will appear once again, with those beneficial effects.