The Man Who Turned His Bicycle Into a Railroad Car
Vancouver editor G. E. Beeson converted his bicycle into a rail velocipede to cross the strike zone—and found Ellensburg packed with troops, passengers, and dwindling sugar.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mr. G. E. Beeson, editor of the Vancouver Independent, is in the city, having arrived on one of the belated Northern Pacific trains from Spokane. To a Post-Intelligencer reporter he related tales of varied experiences on the trip. Being an enthusiastic cyclist he carried a wheel about with him and during the strike put it to excellent use by converting it into a railroad velocipede to run on the rails. By this means he traveled from Spokane to Ellensburg, where he was forced to await the rebuilding of a burned bridge. Mr. Beeson's invention created a great deal of interest at stations along the way, particularly among railroad men. The velocipede, he says, is very speedy, having made as high as twenty-three miles in one hour, and 110 miles in one day with ease. At Sprague and Pasco, on account of the new velocipede, he was taken for a 'spotter' for the railroad company, and at Ellensburg matters were even worse, so he concluded to take the train. 'Times at Ellensburg,' he said, 'were rather lively, for many reasons. Four trains and several hundred passengers, soldiers, militiamen and deputy marshals combined gave the town a lively appearance, but the crowd nearly ate the people out of supplies, the sugar supply being very scanty, and brown at that. At the depot all were compelled to kill time as best they could. Some of the passengers went fishing, some played cards, some talked politics; the Populists, who were returning home from the convention at North Yakima, howled billions and billions, and the militia boys, some of the younger ones, played with handcars, never failing to keep their eyes on their guns and the commissary. Some of the militiamen worked like heroes at repairing the damaged bridge across the Yakima river a few miles above Ellensburg. When the train pulled out, after a delay of four days, there was a hurrah that would have done credit at a Fourth of July celebration.' Mr. Beeson reports that great damage will result to crops in the upper country from a lack of harvesting machinery, which is supposed to be tied up along the road in 'dead' freight trains. At Prosser, he says, farmers have very few grain bags, and they cannot handle their grain until traffic is resumed on the railroads. Very large cereal crops will seriously suffer throughout Eastern Washington generally for the same reason.
“The velocipede, he says, is very speedy, having made as high as twenty-three miles in one hour, and 110 miles in one day with ease.”
Beeson's rail-bicycle is a reminder that in 1894, when the railroad stopped, people improvised—sometimes absurdly—to keep moving. The image of a cyclist pedaling down the rails past stranded passengers and troops captures both the ingenuity and the makeshift chaos of a regional shutdown.
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