by Tom Ewing
November 27, 2025
Thanksgiving bicycle parades, races, and festivals emerged in the 1890s and continued into the 1920s, during the first golden age of cycling. In 1892, a Thanksgiving bicycle race in San Antonio, Texas, featured races over quarter and half miles with various categories of tires. Four years later, in 1896, the same city organized a Thanksgiving bicycle race that included “a comical race, open only to old-fashioned wheels with cushion tires, etc., which promises to be quite a feature.” In 1896, Thanksgiving track races betweeen Memphis and Nashville clubs were scheduled in the evening, to avoid conflicts with football games, with the promise of “a battle between the two cities from start to finish.”
Thanksgiving bicycle races resumed after World War I, as bicycling regained popularity and manufacturers and retailers sought to capitalize on new forms of recreation. In 1920, the city of Knoxville scheduled “A Day of Fun and Joy” at the “Bicycle Race Meet” at Chilhowee Park on Thanksgiving Day. An advertisement published on November 20, 1920 promised a gold medal for the best decorated bicycle, a one mile free race, motor wheel races, and trick riding on motorcycles. An accompanying illustration depicts more than thirty cyclists, young and old, male and female, and with a range of clothing indicating the functional uses of cycling, including one man carrying a set of golf clubs over his shoulder while riding a bicycle. Among the sponsors was the “Knoxville Bicycle Hospital,” with the slogan: “Where They Fix Anything.” In 1922, an article about the demolition of the building housing the “Knoxville Bicycle Hospital” indicatd it was the oldest bicycle repair shop in the city, established in the early 1900s. A Thanksgiving bicycle parade took place in Knoxville in 1926 (but without any races). A newspaper search indicates that no further similar events took place in the late 1920s or 1930s, further evidence that the golden age of cycling had come to a close.
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