Central to Carroll Quimby's bicycle advocacy was the formation and early days of the Salem Bicycle Club. Apart from their own internal histories and self-understanding, it is interesting to consider ways the club and club members were visible to other Salemites more popularly as mediated in the newspaper. There are several of the usual ride and race announcements, but these seem conventional and are of less interest here. More interesting is the advocacy and a little on leadership demographics.
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| February 28th, 1969 |
The announcement for the first meeting was in February of 1969. It was directly adjacent to a much larger article and photo for "the city's first parking lot," on the former site of the Schreiber and Klinger buildings on the north side of State Street between Liberty and High Streets.
It seems a little poetic that as the City was hollowing out the urban
fabric for parking, bicycle riders were organizing for the modern and
still current instance of a club.
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| May 27th, 1887 |
The first instance was probably this one, a Chemeketa Bicycle Club, from 1887. But clubs were not continuous, and there have been several formations since.
In 1969 our current instance was identified as the Salem YMCA Bicycle Club.
Carroll Quimby had come from a family with clergy, the Y was historically an expression of muscular Christianity, and in the first full set of elections for the second year of the club, two clergyman assumed positions of leadership.
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| February 2nd, 1970 |
Rev. Charles Farham was president of the club, and preached at First Christian Church. Rev. Cy Eberhart, chaplain for the club, was also chaplain at Memorial Hospital.
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| October 29th, 1969 |
Maybe there will be more to say another time about implied and explicit religiosity in early club activity. It would be interesting to know how fully welcome non-Christian Salemites felt in the club at this time.
On the leadership list you might also recognize the names of Larry Lewis, vice-president of racing for the club, and of Tom Golden, a vice-president of touring. Lewis was part of the group had recently purchased Harry Scott's bike business, and Golden's family had a mortuary on Gaiety Hill. Ed Dougherty might have been the show promoter.
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| December 5th, 1970 |
Here's an in-kind donation of advertising by the mortuary, again naming the "Salem YMCA Bicycle Club."
Before the Bicycle Bill in 1971, the club started a campaign to advocate for "bikeways" here in Salem, streets signed for bicycling, but with no other markings or provision. It relied on the good graces of drivers to "share the road."
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| November 8th, 1970 |
Except the photo caption reads, "Cyclist shares busy Center Street lanes
in downtown Salem with late afternoon rush traffic"! Here already we
have the autoist understanding of "share the road," as if the burden for
"sharing" — and giving way, as they remained interlopers — was mainly on people biking, not any
expectation or burden for drivers to make safe passes and particularly to tolerate the slower
user in a gracious gesture of sharing.
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| November 13th, 1970 |
One editorial showed a bias against transit, and was interested in biking because it was cheaper and easier than transit.
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| Nov. 25th and 26th, 1970 |
It was nice to see pollution mentioned again.
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| November 29th, 1970 |
The advocacy effort for bikeways carried into 1971. This was also paired with plans for a national-level bicycle race.
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| March 28th, 1971 |
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| March 28th, 1971 |
The City Traffic Engineer, William Stark, apparently opposed route segments on busy streets. It was framed up as "safety" for young riders, since the routes would be signed in a non-legal advisory way only. But that was additionally a screen for opposing traffic impedance by people biking. It's wasn't purely a sham argument, but there were, and continue to be, ways that anxiety about congestion and traffic impedance are displaced into the frame of safety.
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| April 1st, 1971 |
In response, CATC argued for a network of lower-traffic bikeways.
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| April 30th, 1971 |
An intriguing name here is William Tebeau, chair of CATC at that time, and an engineer at ODOT. OSU named a dorm after him a decade ago. He argued that "bicycles and other traffic have to be separated for real safety."
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| May 11th, 1971 |
The amended plan was eventually approved, but the paper noted CATC "believes that marking the routes won't make it any safer for riders."
Separately, with time and distance the saga of the race, the US National Road Race Championship, is amusing, though it must have been quite frustrating. Carroll Quimby lived at this time on Ratcliff Drive, more or less on the border between SCAN and Morningside. He drew up a proposed route along residential streets he knew in his immediate neighborhood.
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| April 25th, 1971 |
He may have got in over his head. National race officials panned the proposed route.
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| June 18th, 1971 |
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| July 17th, 1971 |
Quimby developed an alternate route that had fewer turns and used 12th Street. It was a big enough deal the afternoon paper editorialized on it. A little later CATC deliberated on it and made a recommendation.
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| July 1st, 1971 |
It is interesting to see how much larger was CATC's role and power in 1970-71. On the one hand it was dominated by autoist interests, and could foil bike advocacy. On the other hand, it would be at least theoretically possible to have a greater proportion of reform-minded people on it and for it to help steer transportation reform in a more positive direction. As the City today considers boards and commissions, maybe a larger role for CATC is in order.
The result of all the debate was a shift for the race route to the area near what is now Corbin College and the industrial parks just north of it along Kuebler. It was front page news.
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| July 28th, 1971 |
About the races there is less to say, but the gendered coverage is interesting, if not at all surprising.
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| August 21st, 1971 |
With the bike boom, a familiar problem grew in visibility.
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| November 20th, 1971 |
This was not a new problem. 50 years earlier there was a similar story, and in the first boom of the 1890s it had been a problem. It's always been a problem! Bikes are portable and easily fenced.
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| October 21st, 1921 |
In another installment we'll return to look at the advocacy in 1972, after the Bike Bill became law.
4 comments:
I hope you will let us know what became of the "bikeway" plan. Thanks for all this great research.
From the April 30th, 1971 story, "Indirect Routes Proposed to Avoid Salem's Heavy Traffic":
"...here's a basic description of the city-wide CATC version of a bikeway, which incidentally involves all the routes leading to Bush Pasture Park in the center of the city.
South Route: Leaves Bush Park on Davidson Street and follows Wilbur Street, Berry Street, Rural Avenue, Summer Street, Fairview Avenue, Bluff Avenue, Ratcliff Drive, Hulsey Avenue, Madrona Avenue (where it crosses Commercial Street SE at at traffic signal to be installed), Liberty Road, Stanley Lane, Ewald Avenue, Crestview Drive, Garlock Street, Neelon Drive, Browning Avenue, Oakman Street, Warren Street, Camelia Drive, Cunningham Lane, 13th Avenue, 12th Place, Joplin Street, Talisman Street, Joseph Street, Skyline Road, Kubler Road, Croisan Creek Road, and ending at South River Road at city limits.
East Route: Leaves Center of city at intersection of Winter and Mill Streets SE, follows Mill, 24th Street, Simpson Street, 25th Street, Mission Street, and then Turner Road to the southeast city limits.
North Route: Leaves center of city at intersection of Mill and 17th Streets NE, and follows 17th north to Silverton Road and then on Silverton Road to city limits. North Route also has a leg starting at intersection of 17th and D Streets NE and following D Street to Lancaster Drive NE and two legs toward center of city leaving from 17th Street and following Chemeketa and Court Streets NE.
West Route: Leaves Bush Park at Winter Street SE and follows Trade Street, Front Street and both Marion and Center Street bridges across Willamette River to West Salem. In West Salem it follows Wallace Road, Glen Creek Road, Kingwood Drive, Eola Drive and Edgewater Street NW."
The City did not care for the expense of signing these routes, and it's my sense that mostly they were not signed. Perhaps more will emerge later.
I think there's a map! In this post on the first annual State of Oregon Bikeways report from 1972, there's not-so-good photo of a map of Salem. The dotted red line corresponds to the routes. I'm sure it's 100% from the 1971 article, but if not, it's very, very close.
Edit: Dang, "I'm NOT sure it's 100%" etc.
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