Remember When...

Pedal pushers got the populace all steamed up over the 100-mile bicycle race around San Francisco Bay, 'way back in the gay nineties? The sport of bicycling was then a real man's game, and two-wheel athletic events were not confined to the six-day race arenas. Wheelmen of the Oakland Acme Athletic Club started contesting with San Francisco teams in 1893, and returned the winner in a number of annual contests. The boys burned up the road, too. The races started at Third and Market Streets San Francisco, and the route lay via San Jose to Twelfth and Broadway, Oakland.

Time for the first year's race was five hours, 48 minutes, 51 and two-fifths seconds. This photograph shows members of the Acme Club team which won the race in 1896. (Top) JOE ROSE; (middle row left to right), WALTER DECKER, THEODORE SCHLEUTER, JIM KENNA, EDDIE SMITH, and JACK SAMPSON (lower row, left to right), GEORGE NISSEN, Team Captain AL SWAIN, M. A. SQUIRES, and JACK HOWARD. The recumbent figure in the foreground is PETE LA FEVRE. This is one of a series of photographie reminiscences of days now gone.

Anonymous