Mountain Biking’s First Bikes

In 1816 Baron Karl von Drais built what came to be known as a draisine. It was a steerable two-wheel vehicle without pedals.

In 1887, Irish veterinary surgeon John B. Dunlop fitted a piece of rubber hose to his son’s bicycle. The superior air ...

The “fat tire,” that is one having a cross-sectional diameter of 2″ or more, fired the imaginations of many off-road riders. ...

In the spring of 1966, Rodney Rom of Cincinnati, Ohio, widened the rear of a new 10-speed Schwinn Varsity Tourist frame to fit fat tires. ...

In 1973, Russ Mahon of Cupertino, California (75 miles south of Marin County) grafted derailleurs onto a 1930s...

Built in Spokane, Washington in the spring of 1974, for riding in snow, Bob Crispin widened the frame of a Schwinn Varsity ...

Gary Fisher’s 1941 Schwinn Excelsior is one of the most-photographed bikes of Marin County's 1970s off-road scene. ...

Like several Velo Club Tamalpais members, Joe Breeze was a fat-tire rider as well as a road racer. In 1974 he learned to build frames. ...

The 1979 Lawwill Pro Cruiser was one of the bikes that bridged the gap between BMX and mountain bikes. ...

In Spring 1979, road racer and framebuilder Tom Ritchey of Palo Alto (50 miles south of Marin) started building fat-tire frames. ...

Ross Bicycles of Pennsylvania first sold its Diamond Cruiser production bike, which was similar to the Lawwill Pro Cruiser, in 1981 ...