Paul Thomasburg, 1980

This information is from an article written by Maurice Tierney in Dirt Rag Mountain Bike Magazine, April 2006 (issue #120).   Click to enlarge image; text from article is below.

"Paul Thomasburg was around in what we'll call the "experimental" stages of mountain biking-the 70s. Breakage was an issue and this led Paul to design and build his own frame with the help of frame builder Kimo Tanaka in 1980.

Yes, that's an 18" motorcycle rim laced to a 140mm Phil Wood tandem hub. You'll also notice the cranks-one piece Tikagis with homemade triple chain rings made from modified Schwinn doubles.

The main tubes are 1.25" in diameter, so Paul had to cobble a front derailleur together from spare bits. Power is transferred through a Sedis chain into a New Winner freewheel. Stopping is handled by Tomaselli motorcycle levers and Mafac cantilever brakes. The fork is a unicrown Cool Brothers BMX cruiser type.

This bike feels like a boat anchor when you pick it up, but Paul rode it all day during the Crossroads Bike Fest last year, and he was in front the whole time."

 

Dennis Gwenn, 1966

He called it a "Mountain Bicycle" on July 24th of 1966

I was a mountain climber in the 1960's and became tired of hiking to the mountains [I was not a good pack mule].  The high trails had been recently closed to motorized travel so there was  only one option to hiking into base camps, bicycle there.

So I "made" a special bicycle to accomplish this. It was an old Columbia fat tired bicycle, but as derailers were exotic in those days, I simply equipped my bicycle with knobby tires the size of wheelbarrow tires.  This solved both the need of a low gear and the traction/flotation problem on loose volcanic ash. [And my dad had two knobby tires exactly like I needed on his riding lawnmower.]

I used the existing coaster brake as it was all that worked for a lawnmower wheel.  I adapted the hub by welding a bicycle wheel center onto the rear hub of the lawnmower wheel.

The frame had to be extended down so the pedals did not drag.  At the rear I cut the upper wheel stays and bent the lower stays down about 6" then I brazed rods into the cut upper stays.  At the front I simply extended the fork tubes down an equal amount so the frame was still level.  I ran a plain bushing at the front. Although it required frequent greasing, it was strong and easy to make.

It worked and was a qualified success, although it was not very good uphill, it was a rousing success downhill. I found that in spite of the low gearing it was still  just as easy to push it uphill, at least the bike frame carried the load of my 40 lb pack.

The bike has peacefully rusted 42 years under a tree as   I did not continue to use it.  I  stopped  climbing after 1967 [ I moved out  of Oregon to  be a graduate student and ended up teaching in  Africa and Asia].

I chased a whole hiking club off the Oregon Skyline Trail one afternoon. Fortunately they were friends and even mentioned my bike in their newsletter the fall of 1966.

Note that in the story, he has called his bicycle  a "mountain bicycle".

"I coined the name,  on the Skyline Trail,  that afternoon in July 1966 when the leader of the hike asked me" What do you call that thing?"  A " mountain bicycle" I replied. I was, after all, riding it on a trail at the summit of the Cascade Mountains."

The Story above is dated

July 24th - 1966

 

The Journal Cover Date is Shown Below

September - 1966