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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe organizers of the Bikecentennial shared many of these same objectives as they planned the route and the trips leading up to 1976. These goals were echoed and amplified in newspapers covering these plans. On April 25, 1976, for example, the Boston Globe encouraged the \u201cadventurous but budget-minded young traveler\u201d to consider \u201ca sub-festival called Bikecentennial \u201876,\u201d which was intended to \u201cintroduce Americans to the delights of long distance bike touring and unveil our new Trans-America Bicycle Trail — longest recreational bike trail in the world.\u201d According to organizer Daniel Burden, as reported in the Boston Globe, the Bikecentennial is \u201ca trek back into the history of the nation,\u201d as the route in many cases follows \u201cold highways that have been supplanted by interstates.\u201d A drawing of a cyclist, wearing sunglasses and no helmet, with fully loaded bags, reinforced this message of youthful adventure for those willing to plan their summer adventures around cycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These same goals of encouraging bicycle-travel, welcoming cyclists, and connecting to history are central to the PEDAL initiative of the Bike 76 VA project, which offers funding to museums, historical societies, and local governments along the route to create public exhibitions, displays, art, and logos. Guidelines and deadlines are available from the project website: https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/pedal-call-for-proposals\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October 30, 2025 by Tom Ewing A recent blog post by the Virginia Bicycling Federation lists several ways that cycling tourism benefits communities: bringing tourists to small towns, boosting outdoor recreational tourism, offering a sustainable travel option, connecting people to history, and attracting events and visitors to bicycle-friendly communities. The organizers of the Bikecentennial shared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bike76-va.vt.domains\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Untitled-438x1024.png\")
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