History of Mountain Bikes

The Mountain bike is a bicycle designed for mountain biking, either on dirt trails or other unpaved environments. Typically the Mountain bike has wide, knobby tires for extra traction and shock absorption. However, recently front wheel suspension has become more common.

The mountain bike is said to of originated from heavy cruiser bicycles used for freewheeling down mountain trails in California, U.S.A. It was the manufacturer Schwinn that made the Schwinn Excelsior frame and riders would modify the bike with balloon tired cruisers. They then later added gears and motocross style handlebars (called Klunkers.) These bicicyles were used to race down mountain fireroads causing the hub brake to burn the grease inside, requiring the riders to repack the bearings. The “Repack races” were born and this inspired manufacturers to start innovating and designing a bike that would be able to cope with such terrain. It wasn’t until the early 1980’s that road bicycle companies started to manufacture mountain bicycles using high-tech lightweight materials.

Joe Breeze is normally credited with introducing the first purpose-built mountain bike in 1978. Tom Ritchey then went on to make frames for a company called MountainBikes which was a partnership between Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelley and Tom Ritchey. The designs were basically road bicycle frames (with heavier tubing and different geometry) with a wider frame and fork to allow for a wider tire. The handlebars were also different in that they were a straight, transverse-mounted handlebar, rather than the dropped, curved handlebars that are typically installed on road racing bicycles. Also, some of the parts on early production mountain bicycles were taken from the BMX bicycle.

Today the Mountain bike market is world wide and is a huge industry. Many bicycle manufacturers have diversified into this area, giving the customer more choice in bikes to choose from.