1887 World Cycling Championship Road Race in Clarksville MO | Missouri Encyclopedia [missouriencyclopedia.org]

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

In the late nineteenth century, cycling became a popular American pastime. The League of American Wheelmen, a prominent club for cyclists, claimed forty-four members at its founding in Rhode Island in 1880, but within seven years its membership had increased to ten thousand members nationwide. Hundreds of other cycling clubs also were formed as both recreational riding and competitive racing flourished across the country. In St. Louis, interest in cycling grew rapidly after the first bicyclist appeared on its streets in 1878, so much so that in 1887 the city was awarded the coveted League of American Wheelmen Meet. The meet, which served as the annual gathering for the national organization, soon included a one-hundred-mile world championship road race at nearby Clarksville, Missouri, on its schedule of events.

L. S. C. Ladish, a St. Louis resident and the publisher of American Wheelman magazine, seized upon the occasion to promote the race at Clarksville, a Mississippi River town in Pike County about seventy miles northwest of St. Louis. The previous year Ladish had successfully sponsored a fifty-mile race on Clarksville’s Old Belt Road, with three of the competitors besting the world record.

Following the conclusion of the League of American Wheelmen’s meeting in St. Louis, race participants, wheelmen, and curious spectators journeyed by train and steamboat to Clarksville for the contest on May 23. Some entrants in the race were professional cyclists, among them a number of previous national champions.

Link: 

1887 World Cycling Championship Road Race in Clarksville MO | Missouri Encyclopedia [missouriencyclopedia.org]

MoBikeFed comment: Bicycle history in Missouri goes way back. In the early 1900s, the St Louis Cycling erected a series of four stone markers along commonly ridden routes - you can still see some of them:

https://terrain-mag.com/st-louis-cycling-club-markers/

And of course the St Louis Cycling Club, founded in 1887, is the oldest continually operating bicycle club in the U.S.

https://www.stlouiscyclingclub.com/

Not coincidentally, 1887 is the same year the League of American Wheelmen meet was held in St Louis.

Click the link to find out all the details about that historical event.