Remembering The Great California Cycleway

Over a hundred years ago bicycles ruled the day, and highways were being built just for them. The California Cycleway, opened in 1900, was an elevated tollway built specially for bicycle traffic through the Arroyo Seco, intended to connect the cities of Pasadena and Los Angeles, in California, United States.

The inventor and promotor of the cycleway was Pasadena resident Horace Dobbins, who attracted ex-California governor Henry Harrison Markham to join him in the scheme. The toll was 10 cents one-way, or 15 cents round trip. Due to the end of the bicycle craze of the 1890s and the existing Pacific Electric Railway lines connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, the cycleway never made a profit. In the first decade of the 20th century, the structure was dismantled, and the wood sold for lumber.