Promotional Information

Every bump in the road, vista, dispute, and triumph, Old Wheelways identifies and analyzes in a taut narrative deftly sited in period technological and social frameworks: here scorches a significant book. -- John R. Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape, Harvard University Robert L. McCullough has created a highly readable, scholarly book about 'landseeers' in America who, in the late nineteenth century, toured on bicycles and developed a new understanding and appreciation of the world around them. Old Wheelways will cause readers to begin looking for remnants of the bicycle paths that were so prevalent before the automobile took over the roads and became the primary way of getting out and around. This book greatly adds to our understanding of the role of bicycles in the creation of America's modern society. -- Gary W. Sanderson, Coordinator, International Cycling History Publications, and Editor, The Wheelmen Magazine In this engrossing study, the author examines the golden age of American bicycle touring, before the arrival of the automobile and general demotion of cycling as child's play. We learn a great deal about who these adventurers were, where they roamed, how they improved cycling conditions, and what they left behind in the way of souvenirs, literature, and landmarks. -- David V. Herlihy, author of Bicycle: The History and The Lost Cyclist

About the Author

Robert L. McCullough is Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at the University of Vermont and the author of The Landscape of Community: A History of Communal Forests in New England and other books.

Reviews

...[A]nyone who's interested in the history of cycling, or the history of infrastructure and landscape, will find the images McCullough has collected fascinating. -Slate
Based on extensive research, Old Wheelways is a confident and detailed recounting of the surprising ways the first bicycle boom transformed both the northeastern landscape and those who beheld it.... Old Wheelways can guide these future explorers, inspire newly penetrating visions, and change the way that we see a nation whose history we thought we already knew. -Environmental History