10/08/2026
Larry is a great tour guide - join in if you can!
CYLING AND HISTORY ENTHUSIASTS TAKE NOTE!
This Sunday, October 11, at 9:45 AM, join historian/author Larry Finisonfor an easy, leisurely ride to see some historic sites: the Waltham Cycle Park (now Nipper-Maher), where Marshall “Major” Taylor raced and Kittie Knox won a cycling costume contest in the 1890s; and see the remnants of the grandstand where thousands gathered to see them.
You'll see a cyclists’ favorite destination, the Lake District of the Charles River, too, including the site of the Charles Metz’s Orient bicycle plant, and his home; the site of Norumbega Park, and the surviving boat house, where cyclists traded in their bicycles and went canoeing and canoodling in the coves; and for those who went too far, the jail cells to hold them. Finally, you'll see the remains of the rail infrastructure that brought cyclists and their buddies out of Boston, and the electric ping-pong train route to Newton Lower Falls.
Larry Finison is the author of Boston's Cycling Craze, 1880-1900, Boston's 20th Century Bicycling Renaissance, and Bicycling Inclusion and Equity (2023). His most recent work is Kittie Knox: Exclusion and Inclusion in Boston’s Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism. He's also a former Mill Talk presenter and Museum friend.
Register with the Charles River Wheelers (if this is your first time on a CRW ride, you can register as a non-member). All details are at
https://www.crw.org/event-6846405?CalendarViewType=1&SelectedDate=10/7/2026
