Map of California roads for cyclers (1895)

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4361p.ct000092/?r=-0.628,0.425,1.749,0.902,0

by grajaganDev • 2 years ago

117 68 2 years ago

If there's one thing to admire/observe about old advertisements or documents like this (aside from the cycling-specific content), it's how much in a previous age, people publicly put their names behind the content and claims. Company names, schedules, assertions of opinion/fact, signed with someone's actual name.

Not like some website where you hardly know what the name is supposed to mean, or who in virtual land you're submitting information and payment to.

lostlogin• 2 years ago

Not like some website where you hardly know what the name is supposed to mean, or who in virtual land you're submitting information and payment to.

The last 100 years are known by the state of California to cause cancer and you will be sued.

Limiting liability is surely behind the change you describes

glaucon2• 2 years ago

Interesting, I wonder what the red lettering (PH, FR, PL etc) beside the red tracks indicate ? I wonder if it is some indication of the nature of the road.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

There's a legend in the upper right of the map. good/fair/poor/very-poor level/rolling/hilly/mountainous

glaucon2• 2 years ago

Ha, thank you. I was on my phone and had zoomed in so I missed the legend.

ChiefNotAClue• 2 years ago

This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Especially the border artwork–the level of detail in some of the sketches, the choice to use plants to tie in the advertisements together. Definitely from a different era.

brudgers• 2 years ago

Related, California Cycleway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Cycleway#:~:text=Th....

_feus9• 2 years ago

Can someone please explain to me why we chose to treat one mode of transportation as the most privileged?

- Pedestrians are expected to yield to cyclists (de facto)

- Motorists are expected to yield to cyclists

- Cyclists can choose to bike at a slow pace on a busy highway, taking up the whole lane (motorists will be cited for impeding traffic)

- They are allowed to bike on the road at night with barely any visibility aids

- They aren't required to have liability insurance or pass any traffic exams

- The police is very lax about enforcing traffic laws for them

I am all for a good bike ride in the mountains, where there is no traffic, but surely the way we treat cyclists is unreasonable?

Retric6• 2 years ago

A lot of cyclist rules are designed around kids.

Thus zero licensing requirements etc.

_feus9• 2 years ago

that actually explains it well

fooblaster2• 2 years ago

In the United States we do treat one form of transport as the most privileged, the automobile.

We force places of business to build parking, forcing lower density, and higher cost to business. We build many neighborhoods without sidewalks at all, and with no bike access, forcing pedestrians and cyclists out of dedicated lanes and into traffic where they need to contend with multi ton SUVs. We do not penalize against designing vehicles with extremely poor visibility and excessive height, which directly translates to fatalities of those not in an armored shell on the roadway.

I would strongly encourage you to read more about building our cities and towns not directly around the automobile. We need to build around people, and bikes, and not strictly around the car.

https://www.strongtowns.org/

Metacelsus• 2 years ago

Can someone please explain to me why we chose to treat one mode of transportation as the most privileged?

- Motorists are provided with massive road construction subsidies

- Motorists are provided with government-mandated parking spaces

- When a motorist hits and kills a cyclist or pedestrian, punishments are usually laxer than for other forms of manslaughter

- Public spaces and shopping areas are designed with motorists in mind

- Zoning layout of cities and suburbs presumes car ownership

- Environmental costs of driving are paid by society at large

I am all for a good drive at NASCAR, but surely the way we treat motorists is unreasonable?

fooblaster2• 2 years ago

Well said!

_feus9• 2 years ago

Not at all, try to support the US economy on a bicycle? Without zoning laws and motoring infrastructure you will have a city of Florence, walkable - sure, but you are in a crowd of cars, pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds, etc.

CodeWriter23• 2 years ago

Wow. Way to not even recognize how you personally benefit from road subsidies. I assume you buy groceries at a grocery store, for example.

doug_durham• 2 years ago

What an odd perspective. Bicycles and Automobiles are treated the same in the law. They have the same rights and obligations. Please provide a citation that says that a car has to yield to a bicycle. They are peers. Cars have to follow the same rules that bicycles do when they choose to be on the public roads. There are some commonsense laws that allow bicycles to ride on the shoulder of a road to allow traffic to flow better. I have seen bicyclists be cited for traffic violations on multiple occasions. I've seen automobiles not be cited for violations many more times.

_feus9• 2 years ago

Just the fact you don't need liability insurance and a passage of traffic laws examination to ride a bicycle on any road except a freeway contradicts the core of your statement.

resoluteteeth2• 2 years ago

Before cars, we did not need things like registration, insurance, traffic signals, speed limits, complicated traffic rules, or even sidewalks for pedestrians or cyclists.

All these things needed to be created solely because cars are extremely dangerous machinery, like forklifts.

Saying that cyclists should need liability insurance because drivers need liability insurance is like saying that it's unfair that people who lift boxes by hand don't need licenses when people who operate forklifts do.

It isn't required because bicycles simply aren't anywhere near as dangerous to people other than the person riding them as cars and the conditions that necessitates these requirements being created for cars don't exist for bikes in the first place.

Symbiote2• 2 years ago

Almost all of this also applies to pedestrians, and I expect you'd feel it would be a significant restriction on personal freedom if one had to be licenced, carry liability insurance and so on to walk somewhere.

In Denmark (where I live) pedestrians and cyclists will generally yield to each other according to circumstances. Almost everyone knows what it's like to ride a bike, and that it's easy (no extra effort) to pause for 1 second while walking to allow a bike to pass, which can save the cyclist having to stop and restart.

mp05• 2 years ago

"It's a beauty there's no mistake the Barnes are white fellows?"

What??

doodlebugging• 2 years ago

It's advertising referencing the Cooper Cycle Company City Agents who ride White Flyers which are a type of Barnes Special bicycle and which evidently were painted white back in the day.

The Cooper Cycle Company advert is centered below the map in the margin.

The Union Crackajack was evidently a Union bicycle for real "Crackajacks" or a riding group by that name and they chose to ride the "Barnes Special" which evidently was painted white as noted in the other advert and according to the description was well-made for the time period in that welds at frame joints were ground down so there were no obvious seams at the connections. It apparently was a quality product.

It looks like several of the bicycle ads reference specific colors for the brand they advertise so that may have been a distinctive maker mark from back in the day.

For example moving around the margin from UL corner - Fenton bicycle described as Blue Crown (maybe a trademark); along UR margin - March-Davis Cycle Company was the "Speedy Pink and Blue"; LR margin and LC both mentioning the Barnes Special; and I suspect that the left margin advert for National and Deere Implement Company bicycles were distinctively colored.

Just my guess.

EDIT: As a matter of fact I found a 1900 Barnes "White Flyer" Cushion Frame bicycle [0] listing in a UK museum site.

That description supports my guess that each manufacturer used color to distinguish their products from the competition. I got lucky.

Here's a little more history of a bicycle racer, Eddie "Cannon" Bald, who rode a Barnes Special and an example of the bicycle. [1]

There's also an eBay listing for a Barnes "White Flyer" frame [2] that is not cheap.

And finally, someone really knows their Barnes bikes and has a great example. [3]

[0] https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/1900-barnes-the-white-flye...

[1] https://thecabe.com/forum/threads/barnes-white-flyer-special...

[2] https://www.ebay.com/itm/163237177987

[3] https://thecabe.com/forum/threads/barnes-white-flyer-special...

jeffbee4• 2 years ago

I always like old maps for reminding us of the places that they thought were important, or would be important, back then, but are minor or forgotten today. For example note the prominent lettering of the town of Colusa and compare with the tiny lettering for Chico, now 20x larger than Colusa. Bodie is noted, but today it's completely abandoned.

Also I want to point out that the notion of riding from Coalinga (then: Alcalde) to Panoche (then: San Benito) via New Idria, on a bicycle, is lunacy. It's a major workout on a modern dirtbike with modern roads. I can't imagine that was a reasonable bicycle ride in 1895, or that anyone had a reason to undertake it from and to these unimportant sites. Must have been different back then.

Panzer045• 2 years ago

It was a different world. You had to walk, ride a horse, take a carriage or take a train. If the train wasn't available, all of the alternatives were probably just slower than riding a bike.

lelandfe• 2 years ago

Bodie mentioned! It's an inhospitable ghost town that will make you appreciate modern conveniences. Hot summer days plunge into freezing cold at night. The sheer danger the stamp mill held for residents is wild to read about. Definitely worth checking out for those heading to Mammoth outside winter (I think the dirt roads close for the snow).

jeffbee4• 2 years ago

Bodie is an amazing place. I don't think it ever closes, it just becomes unreachable by car. You can ski or snowshoe in, and the park is even staffed in the winter by people who live there and have snowmobiles.

somat2• 2 years ago

The bicycle was an amazing revolution in travel that we(or at least I) don't really acknowledge. A relatively affordable machine(both in initial and maintenance costs) compared to a horse. but it makes you 10 times more efficient when you need to go somewhere. The bicycle was amazingly popular for good reason in the late 1800's. Sort of eclipsed by personal motor vehicles just a few years later however.

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

And probably for the same reasons people don’t like bike commuting today when they have a car. The engine obviates topology for you. That is the big difference maker. Throw all the bike lanes on the road you want and if you have some ugly elevation on your a-b, its going to be basically unbikeable unless you give up and walk the bike or are in amazing cycling shape. A hill need not be too big for this either, a false flat can be brutal enough especially coupled with a headwind rolling down that flat.

resoluteteeth2• 2 years ago

The bikes and roads would have been worse than now (e.g. the bikes would have been single speed) but on the other hand in 1895 it seems like the first car hadn't been sold commercially in the US so I feel like the lack of car traffic might have somewhat offset that in the overall experience, and since people do all sorts of crazy rides now I don't think it's that surprising that they were doing it then too.

I bet a fair amount of modern cyclists would be willing to ride an 1895 bike on 1895 roads if it meant zero cars.

femiagbabiaka2• 2 years ago

California and the Bay Area in particular has pretty much always been the best place in the U.S., and one of the best places in the world, for cycling. If you're not riding a bike regularly you're really missing out.

magic_smoke_ee2• 2 years ago

Always carry a patch kit. Puncturevine is everywhere. I got so tired of fixing flats that I bought kevlar-lined tires, installed kevlar armor under that, and used pre-slimed innertubes. The added rolling resistance on a heavy steel-framed Miyata was a workout, but flats went to zero. It's the bike I also used at UC Davis.

BobaFloutist• 2 years ago

Davis is traditionally far better than the Bay. Better infrastructure earlier, and much flatter.

femiagbabiaka2• 2 years ago

Davis is one city I thought? SF/Daly City are the only places with unavoidable hills in my experience.

somat2• 2 years ago

Point of interest: the infamous tulare lake.

A massive[note 1] lake that does not exist any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

And not on this map(for two reasons), the salton sea, a massive lake that did not exist yet. the other reason it is not on this map, besides not existing yet, is the map does not cover that corner of the state.

1. in surface area, not volume, my understanding is it was really a sort of deep swamp.

yuppiepuppie• 2 years ago

According to Wikipedia, it still exists with wetlands and marshes, but the majority of the time it’s dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

Loughla• 2 years ago

If you're in for a weird documentary, watch Plagues and Pleasure On the Salton Sea.

It's amazing.

trillic• 2 years ago

The lake existed as recently as 2023…

nvrmnd• 2 years ago

I found this map a few years ago and had it printed online on canvas, to hang on my wall near my bike area, I recommend doing this with other old maps as well.

magic_smoke_ee2• 2 years ago

The population of San Jose in 1895 was around 20k. I'm imagining bicycling on deep-rutted wagon road passes along the foothills, but full of puncturevine. Good luck going 1 mile without getting a flat.

asveikau• 2 years ago

One thing I find interesting in the labels of place names here, that I've also found in similarly old Bay Area content: Spanish names written in English where there seems to be confusion between "o" and "a", especially at the end of the word.

Examples I see here: San "Gregoria" (for Gregorio), San "Ignocia" (for Ignacio).

Some I've seen in another source, but not this map, were "Sausalita" (Sausalito), "Colmo" (Colma).

This reminds me of how older Americans born around the early 20th century, including one of my late grandparents, but also people in old movies, used to pronounce words like window ("winda"), tomato ("tomata"). Hearing "San Francisca" or "Sausalita" in those dated accents is totally not far off.

Map of California roads for cyclers (1895)

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