About 30 years ago I was asked to help assemble a booklet and a display of historic mountain bike material for the trade shows. Here is a .pdf scan of the booklet.
Category: MTB Archive Posts
This is where I post vintage materials from the Mountain Bike Legacy Project, which primarily covers the years from 1970 to 1990.
There is no order here other that what I found in the files recently. I tried to collect every printed word about mountain biking before 1990, when it became impossible to keep up. Now I am happy to share it with anyone who finds the site.
Read more about the Mountain Bike Legacy Project by clicking on The Archive tab under About Charlie.
1979 MountainBikes Publicity Photos
Today, if you want a photo of a mountain bike “in action,” the rider would be doing a back flip superman no-hander tail whip tsunami, but that standard had not been set in 1979.
Co-Evolution Quarterly, Spring 1978
This is one of the first articles ever to appear in print about this new phenomenon. The sidebar at the end mentions Crested Butte, and inspired five of us to go there in the fall of that year. This visit led to many more.
Crested Butte, 1980
I am in debt to my friend Kevin Montgomery, who unearthed this decades old footage shot during the Crested Butte to Aspen ride in 1980. It speaks for itself, so it needs no further introduction.
First Full Suspension Mountain Bike
Suspension was an obvious thought as soon as mountain bikes became popular, but it took some doing for the first operational system to get on the market. First out were Dan Hannabrink’s Shocker and Brian Skinner’s Descender in 1984, both rear suspension systems. Skinner actually brought the descender to the final race in the Repack…