In 1897, the United States Army was looking for the next great innovation in military transportation. Horses had served faithfully for centuries, trains were revolutionizing travel, and automobiles were beginning to show promise.

Naturally, the Army decided to try bicycles.

And not just a leisurely ride around the parade grounds. The plan was to send 20 Buffalo Soldiers on a 1,900-mile journey across the American West, carrying rifles, ammunition, camping equipment, and everything else they might need along the way.

The men would become known as the Iron Riders, an apt name for soldiers who would conquer mountains, mud, scorching heat, and roads that were frequently little more than optimistic descriptions of the surrounding landscape. They would do it all on heavily loaded, single-speed bicycles that lacked most of the conveniences of the one currently gathering dust in your garage.

What followed was one of the strangest transportation experiments in American military history, proving that the bicycle was a remarkable invention—and that the Army had some rather interesting ideas about what constituted a reasonable assignment.

Why Did the U.S. Army Want Soldiers on Bicycles?

To understand why military officials became interested in bicycles, we need to remember that the bicycle of the 1890s was not merely a recreational device for people who enjoyed wearing impractical clothing and arriving at their destinations perspiring heavily. It was a genuine transportation revolution.

The development of the safety bicycle, with its similarly sized wheels and chain-driven rear wheel, had transformed cycling from a dangerous specialty into something ordinary people could reasonably attempt. Pneumatic tires made riding more comfortable, mass production made bicycles increasingly affordable, and cycling clubs flourished throughout the United States and Europe.

This was a considerable improvement over the towering penny-farthings of the previous decade. As we discovered in our account of Thomas Stevens, who rode a penny-farthing around the world, early cyclists were remarkably willing to risk serious bodily harm simply to avoid walking.

Military planners recognized some obvious advantages. A bicycle did not need hay, oats, water, or a veterinarian. It could be stored more easily than a horse, required less maintenance under favorable conditions, and could move quietly enough to make it attractive for reconnaissance and carrying messages.

General Nelson A. Miles, the Army’s commanding general, had been advocating military bicycles since watching a cycling competition in Chicago in 1891. European armies were already experimenting with them, and American military officials were increasingly curious about their possibilities.

One enthusiastic supporter was Second Lieutenant James A. Moss, a West Point graduate serving with the 25th Infantry at Fort Missoula.

Moss was an avid cyclist who believed that bicycles could become valuable military equipment. In 1896, he organized a small experimental bicycle corps consisting of Black soldiers from his regiment. The men completed several trial journeys, including an approximately 800-mile expedition through Yellowstone National Park and back to Fort Missoula.

Lieutenant Moss was so enthusiastic about his bicycle experiments that he decided to write a book about them. In February 1897, he published Military Cycling in the Rocky Mountains as part of Spalding’s Athletic Library, documenting the Buffalo Soldiers’ 1896 expeditions, their equipment, and the challenges of military cycling. The booklet sold for ten cents and even included endorsements of Spalding bicycles and Christy saddles.

The results of the expeditions were encouraging. Moss therefore proposed something considerably more ambitious: a journey from Montana to Missouri, covering terrain difficult enough to test both the bicycles and the soldiers to their limits.

The War Department approved the expedition on May 4, 1897.

Meet the Iron Riders: The Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry

The men selected for the expedition belonged to one of the Army’s segregated Black regiments. Formed after the Civil War, these units served on the western frontier, where their responsibilities included military operations, guarding transportation routes, and maintaining security.

The nickname “Buffalo Soldiers” became associated with Black troops serving in the West, although its precise origins remain a subject of historical discussion. By the 1890s, the designation was firmly established.

For the 1897 bicycle expedition, Moss selected 20 enlisted men from approximately 40 volunteers. They ranged in age from 24 to 39. Some were experienced cyclists, while others had relatively little time in the saddle. One reportedly learned to ride only about a week before the expedition began, which is a rather aggressive approach to preparing for a 1,900-mile journey.

Three white men accompanied the enlisted soldiers: Lieutenant Moss, Army surgeon Lieutenant James M. Kennedy, and newspaper reporter and photographer Edward H. Boos. Kennedy would tend to the inevitable illnesses and injuries, while Boos would document the journey for readers who presumably preferred experiencing its difficulties from a comfortable chair.

Among the enlisted soldiers was Sergeant Mingo Sanders, a veteran of the 25th Infantry who served as the expedition’s acting first sergeant and senior noncommissioned officer. Lance Corporals William Haynes and Abram Martin led the two squads, while Private John Findley, who had worked in the bicycle industry before enlisting, served as the expedition’s mechanic.

Findley’s assignment was especially important. The men would be traveling through regions where a broken bicycle could not simply be wheeled into the nearest repair shop. A spare part or a competent mechanic might determine whether the entire expedition continued or came to an embarrassing halt somewhere in Wyoming.

For these Black soldiers, however, the experiment carried significance beyond the technical question of military transportation. They served in a racially segregated Army and operated in a society that regularly questioned their competence and denied them equal treatment.

Their accomplishment would demonstrate physical endurance, discipline, and military professionalism on an extraordinary scale. Their country, unfortunately, was considerably less prepared to demonstrate an equal commitment to treating them fairly.

The Bicycles: Sixty Pounds of Military Ingenuity

The Army did not send its soldiers across the country on ordinary recreational bicycles. The A.G. Spalding & Bros. company supplied specially equipped machines designed to withstand the demands of military service. Spalding recognized the advertising potential of having its bicycles endorsed by the United States Army, although the resulting publicity would involve rather more suffering than the average sporting-goods advertisement.

The bicycles, known as the Military Special, featured reinforced components, protective chain coverings, luggage carriers, pneumatic tires, brakes, and specially designed saddles. They also had no modern derailleur gearing, meaning the soldiers could not shift into a conveniently lower gear whenever the road turned uphill.

Each bicycle weighed approximately 32 pounds before equipment was added. Fully loaded, the average weight climbed to nearly 60 pounds.

And there was quite a bit of equipment to add.

The soldiers carried Krag–Jørgensen rifles, bayonets, 50 rounds of ammunition, blankets, shelter tents, clothing, cooking utensils, personal supplies, and tools. The bicycles featured ingenious triangular storage cases fitted inside their frames. Once the soldiers reached camp, these cases could be dismantled and converted into cooking pans.

The arrangement meant that a soldier could transport his kitchen on his bicycle, provided he did not object to eating from something that had recently been attached to a machine dragged through several miles of mud.

The Army arranged supply points approximately 100 miles apart, allowing the soldiers to carry about two days’ worth of food. The proposed schedule called for roughly 50 miles of progress daily, assuming the roads, weather, and mechanical equipment were willing to cooperate.

They frequently weren’t.

Day One: The Roads Immediately Declare War

At approximately 5:30 on the morning of June 14, 1897, the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps departed Fort Missoula. The soldiers rode through town in formation as spectators watched the beginning of what newspapers were already describing as an important military experiment.

The excitement lasted longer than the favorable weather.

After covering approximately 28 miles, the soldiers encountered heavy rain, thunder, lightning, and wind. The roads deteriorated into thick, sticky mud that accumulated around the wheels and made riding extraordinarily difficult. The men were forced to push or carry their bicycles, periodically scraping mud away from the tires with knives or pieces of wood.

By evening they had traveled approximately 54 miles, but the journey had already demonstrated an important weakness in bicycle transportation: the machine might be perfectly capable of traveling 50 miles in a day, provided the road did not decide to change states from a solid to a liquid.

The next day was worse. Continued rain made the wagon roads nearly impassable, forcing the soldiers to push their bicycles along railroad tracks. Progress slowed to fewer than 10 miles.

Then came the mountains. That is a sentence that ideally should not appear in an article about riding a bicycle.

While crossing the Continental Divide, the expedition encountered sleet, snow, slippery grades, and bitter cold. The men stopped repeatedly to warm their hands and ears. Even descending the mountains proved difficult because the heavily loaded bicycles threatened to run away from their riders.

This combination of snow, mud, steep grades, and inadequate roads would have made the journey miserable on horseback. On bicycles, it provided the kind of thorough equipment testing that is usually associated with MythBusters.

The soldiers continued anyway.

Lost in Wyoming: When the Army Invented a Very Loud Bicycle Bell

By late June, the expedition had entered Wyoming, where changing weather, mechanical problems, and difficult terrain continued to interfere with progress.

On June 29, the soldiers encountered another series of obstacles while traveling from Gillette toward Moorcroft, Wyoming. Darkness descended as they struggled over unfamiliar roads, and one soldier broke his bicycle’s front axle. With no replacement immediately available, the unfortunate rider had little choice but to push his disabled machine toward Moorcroft. Moss, hoping to make up lost time and arrange supper for the exhausted men, decided to send a small party ahead.

Hoping to reach Moorcroft, Wyoming, ahead of the exhausted soldiers and have supper waiting for them, Moss rode ahead with the cook and two other men. He left Sergeant Mingo Sanders, the expedition’s senior enlisted soldier, temporarily in command of the main group.

Unfortunately, clouds obscured the moon, plunging the countryside into darkness. The soldiers soon found themselves separated into smaller groups, attempting to navigate unfamiliar terrain without radios, flashlights, GPS devices, or anything else that might have been particularly useful.

Rifle fire provided an improvised solution. Sanders had instructed the soldiers to fire their weapons to help separated groups locate one another. When Moss heard a rifle shot in the darkness, he ordered one of his men to fire in response. Before long, three soldiers who had lost their way appeared and joined his party. The men eventually regrouped at Moorcroft, proving that military rifles could occasionally serve as an effective, if somewhat alarming, substitute for a bicycle bell.

Nebraska: The Bicycle Corps Discovers That Sand Is Not a Road

For all the troubles encountered in Montana and Wyoming, the soldiers had yet to face what would become one of the most punishing parts of the expedition: the Nebraska Sandhills.

The Sandhills presented an enormous region of sandy terrain where wagon roads could become difficult or impossible to ride. The soldiers frequently dismounted and pushed their heavily loaded bicycles through the sand, sometimes covering mile after mile with little opportunity to return to the saddle.

Private Richard Rout later recalled that the soldiers had pushed their bicycles through approximately 185 miles of Nebraska sand, with temperatures reportedly reaching 110 degrees in the shade. Those figures come from a participant’s recollection rather than a complete set of independently verified daily measurements, but the contemporary military reports leave little doubt about the severity of the experience.

There was another problem: water.

Across portions of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska, available water contained high concentrations of alkali minerals that made soldiers sick. At times the men had to depend on railroad water tanks or travel long distances between reliable supplies. Food shortages compounded the situation whenever difficult terrain delayed their arrival at the next supply station.

Lieutenant Moss himself became ill after drinking contaminated water and remained behind at Alliance, Nebraska, to recover. Dr. Kennedy assumed command of the expedition for approximately four days while the soldiers continued across the Sandhills. Once Moss had recovered sufficiently, he took a train to Broken Bow, Nebraska, where he rejoined the corps. Other riders also suffered illnesses that complicated the journey.

It is worth emphasizing that the soldiers were not participating in a recreational endurance challenge with support vehicles, sports nutrition specialists, and an enthusiastic online community offering encouragement. They were conducting an official military experiment in which hunger, thirst, illness, and the physical limitations of their equipment were all part of the data being collected.

Moss later estimated that the soldiers had walked between 300 and 400 miles of the journey, pushing their bicycles instead of riding them.

That is a useful distinction. The Iron Riders completed a 1,900-mile bicycle expedition, but they weren’t necessarily sitting on their bicycles the entire time. Sometimes the bicycle served as transportation. Sometimes the soldier served as transportation for the bicycle.

Bicycles certainly offered some advantages over horses, but at least a horse rarely expected its rider to carry it uphill.

Missouri: The Roads Get Worse, and the Welcome Isn’t Always Better

On July 16, the expedition crossed the Missouri River into the state that would become its final destination. The men had survived mountains, snowstorms, extreme heat, sickness, deep sand, and mechanical breakdowns. Surely the remaining miles to St. Louis would be comparatively easy.

Missouri had other ideas.

Contemporary reports described the state’s roads as among the worst encountered during the expedition, with steep hills, rough surfaces, and stretches of mud that made progress miserable. The weather remained intensely hot, and reliable information about road conditions was sometimes difficult to obtain.

Incidentally, judging by the commuting experiences of the Commonplace Fun Facts editorial staff, Missouri seems to regard its nineteenth-century road conditions as a cherished part of the state’s historic preservation program.

As if road conditions weren’t enough, there was also the matter of racial prejudice.

The Buffalo Soldiers were widely admired in some communities, where crowds gathered to see the unusual military cyclists. Elsewhere, the men encountered suspicion, hostility, and discriminatory treatment. In one Missouri community, the expedition reportedly had difficulty obtaining sufficient water for cooking.

Another encounter illustrated how the divisions of the Civil War remained very much alive more than three decades after its conclusion.

When reporter Edward Boos asked an elderly farmer whether the soldiers could camp on his land, the man wanted to know whether they were Union soldiers. After learning that they were, he ordered them away. Someone at the farmhouse eventually offered a place to camp below the pigsty, which was not exactly an enthusiastic display of hospitality.

For Black soldiers who had fought through difficult country while representing the United States Army, these encounters were an unfortunate reminder that wearing the country’s uniform did not guarantee the country’s respect.

Yet they continued eastward, drawing increasing attention from newspapers and cycling enthusiasts eager to witness the conclusion of the extraordinary experiment.

July 24, 1897: The Iron Riders Conquer St. Louis

On Saturday, July 24, 1897, the expedition finally reached St. Louis.

Approximately 1,000 local cyclists rode out to meet the soldiers and escort them into the city. Large crowds lined their route, and the weary travelers were greeted with an enthusiasm that must have seemed particularly welcome after their experiences on the road.

The soldiers entered Forest Park that evening, where they established camp near the Cottage Hotel. During the following days, thousands of visitors came to see the men, inspect their bicycles, and watch military demonstrations.

The expedition’s official distance was 1,900.2 miles. It had taken 41 calendar days, including rest periods, delays, and approximately 34 days of actual travel. The average distance on travel days was roughly 56 miles, an impressive achievement given the conditions.

There is one important qualification to the frequently repeated claim that 20 Buffalo Soldiers completed the journey. Twenty Black enlisted men departed Fort Missoula, but only 19 reached St. Louis. Private Eugene Jones had been sent back to Montana from St. Joseph, Missouri, after reporting that he was ill and unable to continue.

Moss questioned the sincerity of Jones’s illness, but Jones’s own explanation has not survived in the available accounts. Whether Jones was genuinely ill, simply exhausted, or experiencing some other difficulty remains uncertain. Given the extraordinary physical demands of the expedition, however, the remarkable thing may be that 19 of the 20 enlisted soldiers managed to complete the journey.

In any case, the unit had accomplished what it set out to demonstrate. Men carrying military equipment on bicycles had crossed five states, endured almost every imaginable road condition, and arrived in sufficient condition to participate in public demonstrations.

At a time when many Americans had never seen a military bicycle unit, the Iron Riders had given the country a traveling exhibition of technological experimentation, physical endurance, and military discipline.

The National Archives preserves detailed accounts of their arrival and the expedition’s original statistics, including the impressive amount of time the men spent dealing with broken equipment, bad roads, and the other inconveniences of nineteenth-century transportation.

The Experiment Succeeded. So Why Did the Army Abandon Bicycles?

Lieutenant Moss considered the expedition a success. His report argued that bicycles could serve as valuable military transportation, particularly for couriers, scouts, reconnaissance patrols, and small units required to move quickly over favorable roads.

He also recognized their limitations. Horses performed better over certain kinds of rough terrain and in bad weather. Bicycles could become nearly useless in deep mud or sand, and wounded or seriously ill soldiers presented logistical problems that were difficult to solve without other transportation nearby.

His recommendation was not to abolish cavalry and replace every horse with a bicycle. It was to give military commanders another tool that could be useful under the right circumstances.

This was an eminently reasonable conclusion, which is perhaps why military bureaucracy immediately made things complicated.

Moss requested permission for additional experiments, initially proposing another ride from St. Louis to Minneapolis. The War Department declined and ordered the corps back to Montana by train.

The bicycle unit was disbanded shortly after returning to Fort Missoula in August 1897. In February 1898, Moss proposed an even larger experiment involving 100 soldiers riding from Fort Missoula to San Francisco. That request was also rejected, as the United States prepared for war with Spain.

The Spanish-American War diverted military attention and resources, and later advances in motorized transportation further reduced enthusiasm for a permanent American bicycle corps. Although bicycles continued to find military uses in other countries, the United States never established the permanent corps Moss had envisioned.

Interestingly, the broader transportation problem would not disappear. In 1919, the Army conducted another long-distance experiment, this time sending a convoy of motor vehicles across the country. Among its observers was a young officer named Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose experience with America’s dreadful roads would help shape his later enthusiasm for better highways. That adventure, involving broken vehicles, mud, and a remarkable amount of mechanical frustration, is examined in our article on the history of the Interstate Highway System.

The Army spent several decades determining that the fundamental problem with American transportation was not necessarily the vehicle. It was the rather persistent absence of something suitable to drive or ride it on.

Sergeant Mingo Sanders and the Injustice That Followed

The Iron Riders’ story would be interesting enough as a forgotten military experiment. But the later career of Sergeant Mingo Sanders reveals another, much darker chapter of American history.

Sanders was the expedition’s senior enlisted soldier and an experienced noncommissioned officer. He had joined the Army in 1881, served with distinction, and would later fight in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. His military career reflected precisely the discipline and competence demonstrated by the bicycle expedition.

In 1906, however, he became caught up in what is now remembered as the Brownsville Affair.

That August, a shooting in Brownsville, Texas, killed a white bartender and wounded a white police officer. Local residents accused Black soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Brown, even though there were substantial problems with the accusations and evidence.

President Theodore Roosevelt ordered 167 members of the 25th Infantry discharged without honor, effectively destroying their military careers and depriving many of their retirement benefits. Sanders, who had devoted approximately 25 years to military service, was among those punished.

The irony was especially bitter. Sanders had helped demonstrate the abilities of Black soldiers during one of the Army’s most remarkable peacetime experiments, fought for his country in war, and served as a respected senior noncommissioned officer. Yet his government treated him as expendable when confronted with accusations shaped by racial prejudice.

The injustice was not officially corrected until 1972, when a renewed Army investigation exonerated the soldiers. Their records were corrected to reflect honorable discharges, and President Richard Nixon granted pardons. By then, most of the men, including Sanders, had died.

The Library of Congress preserves important correspondence concerning the Brownsville Affair, including material relating directly to Sanders and the efforts of civil rights advocate Mary Church Terrell to obtain justice for the accused soldiers.

The contrast between the celebration of the Iron Riders in 1897 and the treatment of Sanders in 1906 is difficult to ignore. The country could cheer Black soldiers for completing an extraordinary military assignment while remaining unwilling to extend them the same presumption of innocence afforded to others.

It was a failure of institutional character that no amount of success on a bicycle could overcome.

The Legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers Who Rode Across America

The 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps has occasionally been rediscovered by historians, military enthusiasts, and cyclists fascinated by its unusual combination of technology and endurance. The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula has helped preserve the story, while the National Archives, National Park Service, and Missouri State Parks have documented the expedition and the men who participated.

In 2022, the 125th anniversary of the journey brought renewed attention to the Iron Riders, including commemorative events and a modern bicycle journey retracing their historic route.

The expedition deserves recognition for several reasons. It demonstrated the practical possibilities and limitations of military bicycling, produced valuable observations about nineteenth-century transportation, and showed what disciplined soldiers could accomplish with equipment that was decidedly unsuited to many of the conditions they faced.

But it also belongs to the larger history of the Buffalo Soldiers, whose service regularly contradicted the racial prejudices of the society and military institutions in which they served.

The men did not simply complete a bicycle trip. They carried out an unprecedented military assignment that demanded physical strength, adaptability, cooperation, and extraordinary endurance. Their accomplishment deserved to be remembered even if the Army ultimately decided that the bicycle would not become a permanent fixture of American military transportation.

The Most Successful Bicycle Trip the Army Never Repeated

There is something wonderfully absurd about the entire undertaking.

In 1897, the United States Army wanted to know whether soldiers could travel long distances on bicycles. Rather than limiting the experiment to a comfortable military installation with reasonably maintained roads, it sent a group of Buffalo Soldiers across approximately 1,900 miles of mountains, plains, rivers, sand, mud, and whatever else the American landscape could throw at them.

The men succeeded. They arrived in St. Louis to cheering crowds, completed the mission, and gave their commander ample evidence to support his conviction that bicycles had legitimate military applications.

The Army then decided not to establish a permanent bicycle corps.

From a military planning standpoint, that decision may have had reasonable explanations. Technology was changing, the United States was approaching war, and bicycles had important limitations that no amount of enthusiasm could eliminate.

From the perspective of the soldiers who had spent 41 days dragging approximately 60 pounds of bicycle and equipment across much of the American West, however, one suspects the decision inspired a slightly different reaction.

After enduring snowstorms, heat reportedly exceeding 110 degrees, contaminated water, mechanical failures, and enough sand to make an ordinary bicycle ride resemble an exercise in moving furniture, they had demonstrated that the Army could indeed accomplish the impossible on two wheels.

And perhaps the greatest accomplishment was persuading the Army that it never needed to ask them to do it again.

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