Across Alaska by bicycle in 1900

Think bicycling in a Missouri winter is tough? Max Hirschberg rode a bicycle across Alaska in Spring 1900.  Many prospectors during the Alaskan Gold Rush, like Hirschberg, relied on bicycles rather than dog sleds as bicycles were cheaper and faster.

Here are just a couple of Hirschberg's adventures: 

Max Hirschberg

Hirschberg encountered open water on the Bering Sea, but started out across Norton Sound anyway. Just as he was nearing the opposite shore, the ice shifted, leaving an eight-foot lead of open water between him and land. “I took a chance and leaped to the shore,” he wrote, “where I picked up a piece of driftwood, jumped back on the ice floe and poled myself and my bicycle back to the shore, and went on my way.”

Just east of Nome, he skidded on glare ice and broke a chain. Unable to pedal any longer, Hirschberg found a stick, strung it through his large parka, and constructed a sail to catch the wind, which was blowing in the direction of Nome. “At times the wind was so strong that I was forced to drive into some soft snow to stop my wild flight,” he wrote. “Without my chain I could not control the speed of my bicycle. However, I finally arrived at Nome, May 19, 1900, without further incident. I had had my twentieth birthday on the trip.”

Read the rest of the story on the Half Past Done blog.

More about Hirschberg's adventures from IceBike.org and the Alaska Historical Society.