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1879 — 1900
A century before the first greenway segment, Fort Wayne's first trail system was its streets, and its first trail organization was a bicycle club. The early bicycle period in the city, 1879 to 1900, is documented in Cleo Goff Wilkens' resume of the era, Ordinaries, Safeties and Fun, preserved by the Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society. The machines of the first years were ordinaries — the high-wheel bicycles — and the riders were "wheelmen." On 9 April 1884 several wheelmen met at the County Auditor's office to organize the Fort Wayne Bicycle Club, a group that, in Wilkens' account, "had much to do with activities during the ordinary wheel period." Dr. George A. Ross was elected president; Clement W. Edgerton, vice-president and captain; Charles McLain, secretary and treasurer; and Stephen D. Bond, lieutenant. (An Allen County Public Library photograph of the club is captioned 1881, three years before Wilkens' organization meeting; the two datings stand unreconciled in the record.)
The club rode as clubs rode then: in uniform, in formation, and far. On 10 June 1884 Edgerton and Bond wheeled to Hicksville, Ohio, and back — 52.8 miles in a little over six hours and thirty-seven minutes — wearing their new club uniforms. In 1888 the club extended honorary membership to women riders. Racing ran under the rules of the League of American Wheelmen, the national organization formed in 1880, which set racing qualifications, fought regulations that barred bicycles from roads and streets, and campaigned for good roads; by 1897 the League counted 78,527 members. Fort Wayne's own racing ground in the safety-bicycle years was a boulevard: the Fort Wayne Cycling Club held races on Forest Park Boulevard, and an Indiana Historical Society caption on the club's 26 June 1892 picnic photograph at Swift's Farm records that modern bicycles became common in Fort Wayne in the 1890s and that bicycle parties joined the races in the decade's late years.
The wheel was also, briefly, a political machine. In the 1896 campaign Fort Wayne's Sound Money Bicycle Club — four hundred members, in Michael Taylor's study of the bicycle bloc in the Indiana Magazine of History — took part in parades, held public races, and escorted Republican speakers from Fort Wayne to the smaller outlying towns such as Cedarville and New Haven; when Richard Guenther came to the city in September 1896 to address the German vote, sound-money cyclists escorted him to the Princess Rink. Gubernatorial candidate James Mount received a warm reception from the club on his Fort Wayne visit. The club era faded with the bicycle boom itself around 1900; Fort Wayne would not organize around the bicycle again for seventy years, and when it did, it built paths instead of parades. The natural-surface footpaths that walkers used in these same years belong to the Hike Trails leg and are not followed here.
Sources: Cleo Goff Wilkens, Ordinaries, Safeties and Fun (partial reprint, Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society; brinin.org/features/ordinaries/fwbike.html) — club organization 9 Apr 1884 and officers; the Hicksville ride, 10 Jun 1884; honorary membership to ladies, 1888; the League of American Wheelmen, formed 1880, 78,527 members by 1897. Michael Taylor, "The Bicycle Boom and the Bicycle Bloc: Cycling and Politics in the 1890s," Indiana Magazine of History 104 (September 2008) — Sound Money Bicycle Club, four hundred members, escorts to Cedarville and New Haven, the Guenther escort, the Mount reception. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, Fort Wayne Bicycle Club page (acgsi.org) — the 1881-captioned club photograph and member names; the Indiana Historical Society caption on the 26 June 1892 Swift's Farm picnic photograph (Fort Wayne Cycling Club races on Forest Park Boulevard; bicycle parties in the late 1890s).