Fat Tire Bike Regularly Available
Date: 1979
In Spring 1979, road racer and framebuilder Tom Ritchey of Palo Alto (50 miles south of Marin) started building fat-tire frames. In Fall 1979, Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly of Marin County launched the company MountainBikes, with the Ritchey frames as their first offering. Fisher and Kelly assembled the frames into bikes and sold them for about $1400. From 1980 onward, Tom Ritchey built hundreds of fat-tire bike frames each year.
