I organized a visit to the latent Cycling Museum of Minnesota this weekend, and was delighted to see all the cool old bikes in the basement of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral by Loring Park.
They also had these cool maps, which I will share with you now.
[Apologies for the crap photos, but you get the picture…]
They show all the bike shops and bike companies that were located in the Twin Cities during the peak of the 1st “bicycle boom” in the late 1890s. Back then, bicycles were the cutting edge and all the rage. So naturally there were dozens and dozens of small shops building, fixing, and selling bicycles all through both Twin Cities.
The Cycling Museum of Minnesota is a great place to visit if you’re interested in learning about bike history, or imagining what it might have been like to ride a bike through Minneapolis 120 years ago. If you ever get a chance to check it out, go for it!