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Show r r. t t ( t t !' !. J SALT FLAT NEWS, APRIL, 1975 GrantsutBe or Bash STTLT Lrn by Tim St Clair It must certainly rank as one of the most outrageous marketing techniques ever devised. It was 1896 and William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal, was d locked in a circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer and his New York World. Hearst wasdetermined to boost sales of the Journal. Among the many schemes he tried, Yellow Fellow Transcontinental Bicycle Relay was one of his The Journal-Examinmost ambitious. ' head-to-hea- er Named, in honor of Hearsts Yellow Kid carwas de- popular toon character, the relay signed to capitalize upon the cross-countr- - - . bi- cycle craze which swept the country in the 1890s. It was the y first bicycle relay, running horn the offices of the San Francisco Examiner, another Hearst enterprise, to the Journals offices in New York. It was comprised of a series of 220 relays with two riders participating in each leg. And hopefully, as both the Journal and the Examiner kept the nation abreast of the progress of the cyclists as they brayed the various geological treacheries of the continent, sales of the New York Journal would muscle to the top at street comer newsstands. ' . However, one of the most dangerous chapters in the relays history took place a full month before the first two riders ever left the Examiners offices in San Francisco at noon on August 25. W. D. Big Bill Rishel of Salt Lake City was appointed to plot the course of the relay from ' Truckee, California to Cheyenne, Wyoming. ; a was Rishel recognized bicycleracing enthusiast and operated the world fiftnous bike track at the Salt Palace. He was a highly-toute- d competitor, and a likely choice to challenge the ominous Salt Flats. , Big Bill Rishel was a man of action. He decided that course-- . Before long their water gave plotting was a task to be done on location. The thought of test- out. The sun scorched down upon them and the day became ing the grit. of the heretofore beckchoked with swarms of mosquimust have flats salt virgin toes from the salty marshes oned to him like a They came across the remains of thigh calls to a sex fidnd. Donner warnthe hushed the at Scoffing torencounter which an Rishel local the of Party, ings citizenry, their and his cohort, C. A. Emise, pedoed already flagging pedaled away from the relative spirits Still deep within the desert, civilization of Wendover and steered toward the heart of the Rishel and Emise had to have desert. They struck out in the water to survive. They struggled dead of a July night with meager toward the foothills and found supplies and only a few flasks of the barest trickle. It' was just water. ' And while these . two enough to produce a single cup of brackish water after a wait of courageous souls failed themselves against the savagery of the an hour; There was more mpd, more salt flats, William Randolph of Hearst, the primary beneficiary mosquitoes and more beat bethis rather risky undertaking, slept fore the twosome finally reached comfortably within the splendor Grantsville at midnight, some hours after leaving twenty-tw- o of his newspaper fiefdom. well-sculpt- ed long-since-doom-ed . - With no maps available to guide him, Rishel decided to follow the lingering remnants of Wendover. What sort of reception await-- , ed the first men ever to pedal across the. salt flats on bicycles!? Well, it was the same one Lewis Mills Norton got when he invented pineapple cheese. Except for the location it was identical to the one Isaiah Rogers received the early pioneer trails. The same trails which fifty years earlier had led west to gold fields in California' now led east to booming newspaper sales in New York. At first the moonlit salt enabled them to make good time. They averaged twenty miles per hour bn the ..hard surface. But soon they encountered sand and were forced to push their bicycles. As the following morning came and went, the sand gave way to thick, gray mud, and llishel and Emise had ; to carry their bicycles. . when he became the first man to install bathrooms in an American hotel (that took place, in Boston)'. The same treatment was afforded the members of the Amateur Electrical League at Dr. Beddows Pneumatic Institute when they invented the motor-operate-d . pushover. Nothing. No bands, no speeches, no Photo courtny of Uuh State I Rishel and bicycle in 1896: Grantsville was a letdown. W.D. (Bill) photographers, no homecoming queens. Not even a barking dog. It was the climax of one of the most grueling human en-- , deavors ever attempted and not even a tingle faded streamer from the Grantsville High Junior Prom of 1896 was put out to welcome Rishel and Emise back from their perilous journey. However, as is so often the case in matters of such import, the one redeeming factor resulting from the expedition was knowledge. Big Bill Rishel now knew precisely where not to plot the course of The Journal-Examin: er Yellow Fellow Trans- continental Bicycle Relay. So when the relay finally did traverse Utah a month later the riders crossed the somewhat less barren lands north of the Great Salt Lake. Except for a , The rather sinister face on our cover belongs to Jim Davis, who lives iir Lehi, Utah, with a lot of unusual pets, including nine wolves. Jim isnt inclined to lycanthropy, however, and insists the hair on his face is only there to lend character to a role hes playing in a movie. In fact, the beard only succeeded in giving him a rash, so one recent night when the moon was full, he shaved it off and sdd good riddance. . .v . But Jim still plans to make the film, with help from his friends Doug and Lynne Seus, who recently moved to Utah from California. If Lynne looks familiar, its because die used, to play Doug McClures girlfriend in the TV series The Virginian.. For more about' Doug, Lynne, and . er . . Journal' leaped, by nearly 125,000 in a single month after the race. Whether or not Americas first transcontinental bicycle relay can be credited is debatable because Hearst had several promotional irons in the fire at the time. Nevertheless, history can proudly point to Big Bill Rishel as being the man who told William Randolph - Hearst ' where not to go. ' THE SALT FLAT NEWS is published twelve times a year by the Salt Flats Publishing Corporation, Am Smith, President ONTHECOVER: anot-so-sinist- minor altercation 'alledgedly involving an armed hijacking, the Utah leg of the relay came off without a hitch. ! All in all the relay turned out to be an unqualified success. The last team of riders rolled up to the . Journals offices in New York after a total time of 13 days 29 minutes. That was 30 percent. Caster than the Pony Express. Circulation, figures for the wolf man, see page eleven.- . - . Editor: Richard Menzies Richard Goldberger Artist: Richard Holdaway . Reporter-At-Larg-e: - P.O.BOX 11717 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84111 i - . t . M. - ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE |
