--- title: Mountain Biking's Roots in 1970s California Counterculture description: Off-road biking began with the antics and inventiveness of a rag-tag set of adventurers in the 1970s, fans of the outdoors and The Dead. canonical: https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/ author: Randy Stearns article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-20T22:26:42.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:20.072Z og:title: Mountain Biking's Roots in 1970s California Counterculture og:description: Off-road biking began with the antics and inventiveness of a rag-tag set of adventurers in the 1970s, fans of the outdoors and The Dead. og:url: https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mountain Biking's Roots in 1970s California Counterculture twitter:description: Off-road biking began with the antics and inventiveness of a rag-tag set of adventurers in the 1970s, fans of the outdoors and The Dead. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Mountain Biking's Beginnings: Fat Tires, Broken Hubs and the Grateful Dead > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=41804843-b612-40c9-a29d-6e4b772755d2&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns May 20, 2014 10:26 PM UTC by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns May 20, 2014 10:26 PM UTC Long before there were [gutter bunnies](http://www.bikecommuters.com/2010/07/12/gutter-bunnies/), [baby heads](http://bit.ly/1o2VCy7) or [WOMBATS](http://www.wombats.org/), there were cyclists eager to push the limits of what their equipment and bodies could take. It began with a group of sporty iconoclasts, wheeling down the hills of northern California, creating a rough-and-tumble style of biking to match their unconventional personalities. They made it up as they went along, modifying their bikes to manage the terrain and enjoying themselves in all the ways that adventurous youth did in that era. Watch [UC Fig. 1](https://www.youtube.com/user/fig1)‘s video about the early days of mountain biking. Narrated by UC San Diego’s [Sarah McCullough](http://ridingresearch.com), who wrote her PhD thesis on the topic, it tells the history of the sport, the “renegades (including the women) who started it, remade the bikes and helped create a new leisure industry. And it wasn’t just about bikes and terrain in those days, ideas and music played an important part, including a benefit performance by the band that personified the counter-culture. “\[P\]eople were creating the kind of world they wanted to live in,” McCullough [says](//www.youtube.com/channel/UCT4hX0DRGkr2sz3XMaUeemQ). “A world with trails that created a flow through the mountains, paths they could follow fast, without braking.” If you want to learn more, check out work from off-road pioneers like William Savage ([_Klunkerz_](http://klunkerz.com/trailer-1.html)_)_, and Charlie Kelly ([_Fat Tire Flyer_](http://www.velopress.com/books/fat-tire-flyer/), due out later this year). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/"},"headline":"Mountain Biking's Beginnings: Fat Tires, Broken Hubs and the Grateful Dead","datePublished":"2014-05-20T22:26:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:20.072Z","description":"Mountain biking took root in the fertile counterculture of the 1970s","url":"https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/","keywords":["Living","California","San Francisco","Biking"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Randy Stearns","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/106364/mountain-biking-1970s/","name":"Mountain Biking's Beginnings: Fat Tires, Broken Hubs and the Grateful Dead"}}]}] ```