Old Missoula

Cross-Country Bicyclists, Paddler Come Through Missoula During 1890

Cross-country bicycle riders came through Missoula as early as 1890. It was on Aug. 24, 1890, that two brothers named S. W. and J. H. Rodgers of Boston, Mass., dismounted from their bikes on Higgins avenue near the post office.

They said they had left Boston on April 28 of that year for an ocean-to-ocean bicycle ride. They made an average of 50 miles per day. They left Missoula the same afternoon for Spokane Falls and Portland, planning to reach the latter city in about three weeks.

And, following the bicycle riders by about a month was Edward Rappleye, a reporter for the New York Mail and Express, who was making a canoe trip, from the Statue of Liberty to Astoria, Ore., as an assignment.

He arrived in Missoula on Sept. 26, 1890, and left to continue west on Sept. 29. He had left New York April 10 of that year in a 15-foot paper canoe, with rifle, ax, blankets and camera, with instructions to row from coast to coast and report everything he saw.

He had traveled 4,200 miles by water when he arrived here. His route was on the Hudson River, Erie Canal, across Lake Erie, by land carrying his canoe to Lake Chautauqua, down the Allegheny to the Ohio, then up the Mississippi and the Missouri. He traveled by water all the way from Chautauqua to the Rocky Mountains, before having to carry his boat again.

The canoe was provided with water tight compartments for storing provisions, photographic plates, clothing, and carried a sail and a double-ended paddle.

The reporter told of spending a week in Sitting Bull’s camp and of meeting all the chiefs. He said it was astonishing how many “great chiefs” blossomed out in a few moments when a present had been given one of them – all of them “heap big bad man, kill Custer.”