Switching Gears

UVM professor leads program on history of bicycles in Vt.

Courtesy of PHS

PROFESSOR  LUIS  VIVANCO

Wednesday, Aug. 16, 7 p.m.—PAWLET— The Pawlett Historical Society (PHS) is pleased to present its August program, “Of  Wheelmen, the New Woman, and Good Roads: Bicycling in Vermont, 1880-1920,” to be presented by Luis Vivanco, a professor of anthropology at University of Vermont.

The PHS event will be held Wednesday, Aug. 16 at 7 p.m. at the Chriss Monroe Chapel, Cemetery Hill Road, Pawlet (Cemetery Hill Road is adjacent to the Pawlet Post Office on Route 30).

Professor Vivanco will explore the fascinating early history of the bicycle in Vermont, the new invention that gained widespread popularity in the 1880s and 1890s. By 1920, however, the popular interest in bicycles had waned, but it had not just been a fad. The bicycle was tied to important changes in industrial production, consumerism, new road policies and regulations, gender relations, and new cultural ideas about auto-mobility and effortless speed.

This PHS event is a Vermont Humanities Council presentation, free and open to the public, and accessible to people with disabilities. Refreshments will be provided.

Visitors are asked to park outside the cemetery fence and to walk the 50 yards to the chapel. However, those for whom the walk might be difficult may be driven or drive up to the chapel door and their cars parked within the cemetery fence. For more information, call 802-645-9529.

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