This summer marks the county’s 250th birthday. It’s also the 50th anniversary of a large cross-country biking trip, called the “Bikecentennial.” Several rides are planned in Virginia this summer, and a professor produced a podcast exploring the history along the route.
In 1976, more than 4,000 cyclists from around the world came together to explore the backroads of America. Also known as Route 76, the TransAmerican bike trail begins in Yorktown and ends in Oregon.
The ride was planned as a grassroots effort to honor the country’s bicentennial. Virginia Tech history professor Tom Ewing said then, as now, Americans saw rising oil prices, due to unrest in the Middle East.
“And so a lot of discussion about bicycles in the mid-1970s is about alternatives to driving a car,” Ewing said.
“The Bikecentennial itself is very much connected to the early stages of the early environmental awareness,” Ewing said.
Route 76 runs 555 miles through Virginia, bypassing most cities. It goes through Damascus, Charlottesville, and an intersection just outside Blacksburg, where Ewing often rides. He was cycling the route when he began thinking about a public history that eventually became the Bike 76 Virginia Podcast.
In 1976, he says many small communities were suffering the loss of local businesses, as people migrated to larger cities.
“In some ways that’s accelerated even more,” Ewing said. “So that was something I was very interested in as a historian was how the route in 1976 says something about America that in some cases is still true now, but in other cases has changed.”
There are several biking events planned this summer to mark America’s 250th birthday. The largest ride doesn’t go through Virginia, though several cycling groups are planning another trip in the Commonwealth, traveling roughly the same route as the original Bikecentennial.
