Thursday, June 23, 2016 6:30 PM / $5.00 at the door, free for HHM members.

In the 1870s, cycling in Great Britain and the US triggered a fight over the legal rights of the highwheeled bicycle; a fight that shaped the rights of later bicycles and motor vehicles. Longhurst will expand on this topic, explored in his 2015 book, Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road. James Longhurst is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse and a historian of urban and environmental policy.

High-wheel or “ordinary” riders, along with a tricyclist, take a turn around Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, about 1880.  National Archives RG 306 PS D (61–10196).

Users argue over the right of way on a narrow dirt road in this Harper’s Weekly illustration by A. B. Frost, 1896. The cyclists may want to overtake on the left, as a vehicle would, or may be ordering the wagon out of their way; the farmer is having none of it. National Archives RG 30 (37–788).

Author James Longhurst.  Credit:  Sue Lee, UWL

Bike Battles book cover.  (University of Washington Press, 2015)