Our Story
Bike Miami Valley started to emerge in the early 1960s and operated under a few different titles until becoming the organization you know of today. It all leads back to the Huffy Corporation. In 1961 Horace Huffman Jr., Chairman and CEO of the Huffy Bicycle Corporation, co-founded and sat as the first president of the Dayton Cycling Club. Four years later, he formed and led the Greater Dayton Bikeway Committee, which later would be named the Miami Valley Regional Bicycle Council (MVRBC). Bike Miami Valley (BMV), this nonprofit organization, branched from MVRBC in the early 70s. Bike Miami Valley drafted one of the nation’s first regional bikeway plans, which was adopted by Dayton’s regional planning commission in 1973. This proved instrumental in the development of much of the recreational trail system you might be familiar with today.
After being officially incorporated in 1979, Bike Miami Valley was diligently focused on the region’s cycling trends over the next twenty years. In addition, Bike Miami Valley hosted the region’s largest and most widely celebrated bike event every year; The Thunder Road Bike-a-thon. In the past decade, the organization became dormant, and there is no better way to say it… but it simply put itself out of business by accomplishing its core programs and initiatives.
There seemed to be little left to do, so the organization fell silent. In 2008 Bike Miami Valley resurfaced from that dormant period and is now refocused on current cycling trends and the region’s growing cycling community, which is dramatically different today. We are the founding organization of the Miami Valley Cycling Summit, an event held biennially around the region. The latest accomplishment to our record is hiring full-time staff and launching southwest Ohio’s first bike share program, Link, in May of 2015.
Bike Miami Valley is recognized as a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Business by the League of American Bicyclists.
Please consider joining Bike Miami Valley and help us write the next 30 years of our bicycle history.
