I would like to invite you to  a presentation about bicycle history next week. Please share the announcement with colleagues and community who might be interested.

Good Roads and Good Sidepaths
Presentation by Robert McCullough
Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 5:30 pm
Special Collections Reading Room, Bailey/Howe Library

Robert McCullough’s new book, Old Wheelways: Traces of Bicycle History on the Land,  explores the “golden age of American bicycle touring” at the end of the nineteenth century. In conjunction with the library’s current exhibit, Cycling through the News, Professor McCullough will ta
lk about the bicyclists who shaped and reshaped American culture from 1880 to 1900. These cyclists introduced an independent and dependable means of overland travel, propelled a campaign to improve th
e nation’s pitiful network of roads, swayed park planners, and even set into motion the modern engineering technology essential to the development of automobiles and airplanes.  They constructed a far-flung network of bicycle paths to satisfy their exploratory impulses.  Wheelmen and wheel women also assembled a substantial body of geographical literature, illustration, and photography. Their vivid descriptions of American places made them some of the country’s keenest observers of suburban and rural landscapes.

Robert L. McCullough is Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at UVM. He is the author of The Landscape of Community: A History of Communal Forests in New England and Crossings: History of New England Bridges.

The presentation is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. For more information, email uvmsc@uvm.edu or call 656-2138.

Website: https://library.uvm.edu/news/?p=6828