WALK THIS WAY

 

So you're sitting in the stands of an arena. You buy a snack from a vendor, check the bleachers for well-known faces, and watch a physical entity move around a track. Nascar, Indy car racing?  Nope. It's the 1870s and you are at a competitive walking event. Yep. People used to walk around oval tracks for a really long time while audiences placed bets. The sport of Pedestrianism was America's first national passtime.

Pedestrianism has its roots in walking competitions started in England. A man named Foster Powell walked 400 miles from London to York, then back again. This inspired many challenges of walking long distances in a certain amount of time for money. In America a book publisher, Edward Payson Weston, lost a bet by asserting Abraham Lincoln would not be elected president.  Payson walked from Boston to Washington DC in 10 hours and 10 days to attend Lincoln's inaugural ball. Payson won a handshake   from Lincoln and a bag of peanuts. He fared better in his next competition, winning $10,000 for a walking from Portland Maine to Chicago in 30 days.

But why did Pedestrianism become sport? As with everything in life, the answer is - money. New York City had many elite with many millions of dollars. The elite could buy only so many French antiques or throw so many lavish balls, so they took to betting as a way to circumvent the malaise of having too much money. Oh, if only I were so afflicted!

Pedestrianism worked this way : participants walked around a track for 21 hours a day, 6 days a week. 3 hours each day were devoted to sleeping and nourishment. Bets were placed on who would last longest, who would drop out first, or number of miles walked. The sport had its heroes. Weston repped the upper class ; Dan O'Leary, an Irish immigrant, was the working class idol. Competitive Walker Frank Hart was the first black sports icon in American history.  Three ladies - Emma Sharp, Ada Anderson, and Elsa Von Blumen proved women could go to the distance - literally. Sharp was the first woman to win one of the popular 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours challenges. 

The sport was not without controversy. Walkers could easily be incentivised to quit early (I would totally take that bribe.) The sport also had walkers who "doped" to get a competitive edge. Doping consisted of either drinking champagne - considered to be stimulant, or chewing on coca leaves for an extra bursts of energy.  But by 1876 competitive walking had been eclipse by a new game called baseball. Pedestrianism created many precedents for baseball : the idols, betting, and doping of course, but also trading cards. Tobacconist sold trading cards featuring the photographs of professional Competitive Walkers which of course inspired the idea for baseball cards. Dan O'Leary gave walking demonstrations before baseball games, but the Pedestrianism quickly fell out of favor. Another obstacle blocking Pedestrianism's popularity was a newfangled invention called the bicycle. Why sit in a stadium watching others walk when you could be outside in the fresh air and sunshine riding a bike? Pedestrianism walked off into the arena of forgotten history.

SOURCES :

Bowlin, Ben / Brown, Noel, hosts. "That Time America Fell in Love With Competitive Walking." Ridiculous History, iheartradio, 2 January 2020.

Pedestrianism. Wikipedia.