The Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps

On June 14^th, 1897, twenty African-American soldiers, commanded by their twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant, James A. Moss, departed from their post at Fort Missoula, Montana, to begin a journey of almost 2,000 miles to St. Louis, Missouri. The group was part of the 25^th Infantry Regiment and comprised the first (and only) bicycle corps of the U.S. Army.

Lieutenant Moss was a recent graduate from West Point who held two distinctions at the time of his graduation in 1894. He was the youngest cadet to ever complete studies at the academy, and, he was the class “goat” — a term used to distinguish the cadet with the lowest ranking among all of his classmates. Because assignments after graduation were handed out based on a cadet’s class ranking, Lieutenant Moss was given the last pick of a duty location. There were few white officers who wanted to command black soldiers — dubbed “Buffalo Soldiers” by the Native Americans because of their dark, curly hair. Moss was a Southerner from Lafayette, Louisiana, but he had respect for the Buffalo Soldiers and held them in high regard, so he asked to be posted at Fort Missoula.

Moss was an avid cyclist, and cycling was coming into its own after the invention of the “safety” bicycle in 1874, which differed from earlier bicycles because it was chain driven and both tires were the same size. European armies, particularly in Germany and France, were already using bicycles in a limited capacity for duties such as currier service and reconnaissance. Moss felt strongly that there was a place for the bicycle in military service, so he petitioned General Nelson A. Miles, the Commanding General of the United States Army, to study the feasibility of using bicycles under combat conditions. Miles also believed that the bicycle could prove useful to the army, so he tasked Lieutenant Moss with undertaking the study. On May 12^th, 1896 — on the very day that Lieutenant James A. Moss turned 24 years old — he was given permission to organize the 25^th Infantry Bicycle Corps.

Two months later in July of 1896, the newly formed Bicycle Corps, consisting of eight enlisted men, and Lieutenant Moss, departed Fort Missoula on their first cross-country test. They rode to Lake McDonald, situate almost 130 miles north of the fort in what would become, fourteen years later, Glacier National Park.

The following month, the Bicycle Corps took a second, longer, and more difficult trip. On August 15, they departed the fort, arriving ten days and 500 miles later at their destination in Yellowstone National Park.

The Corps gained valuable experience during these preliminary trips, learning to recognize the limits of both the bicycles and the riders—an experience that Lieutenant Moss used to plan their third and most ambitious test, a 1,900-mile one-way ride to St. Louis, Missouri.

The bicycles for the trip were donated to the army by the A.G. Spalding and Brothers Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, who was eager to have the army test their product. The bicycles were built to military specifications with steel frames and rims and weighed sixty pounds when fully loaded. Each man had to carry his camp equipment and supplies, food rations for two days (there were food caches set up every 100 miles along the route they would travel), a rifle and ammunition.

Moss chose twenty of the forty enlisted men who volunteered for the assignment, along with the assistant post surgeon. Riding along with the Corps was a nineteen-year-old reporter from the Daily Missoulian, Edward Boos, who sent back lengthy and detailed accounts of the journey. The men of the Corps ranged in age from 24 to 39. Five of the riders were veterans of the previous year’s rides to Lake McDonald and Yellowstone. Most of the men were experienced cyclists, but four of them had never ridden a bicycle before and had to learn to ride prior to the trip.

At 5:30 am on June 14, 1897, the soldiers rode out of Fort Missoula. By the time that they entered the city of Missoula to the north of the fort, the streets were lined with an enthusiastic crowd of people cheering the Corps on its way.

The route that Moss decided on closely followed the path of the Northern Pacific and Burlington railroads. It wasn’t long after they started out that the rain started falling in torrents, turning the roads into a quagmire of mud that slowed the progress of the riders. On a number of occasions, the riders wound up carrying their bicycles on their shoulders to make better progress. At the end of that first day of their journey, the exhausted, wet, and muddy men of the Bicycle Corps had traveled fifty-four miles; twice the distance that cavalry or infantry could have traveled under similar conditions.

The trip lasted forty days (thirty-four days of traveling and six days of rest), and covered 1,900 miles, averaging fifty-five miles per day. Of the 1,900 miles traversed, the men of the Bicycle Corps had to push or carry their bicycles almost 400 miles due to deep mud or sand. The Corps endured snow storms, rain showers, and blistering heat. On July 7, the temperature reached 110 degrees in the shade. Many of the men fell ill due to poor water. The only water available to them was in the railroad tanks, but if they were any distance from the railroad they had to rely on groundwater which was alkali. During one stretch in Nebraska, the riders traveled over fifty miles with no water.

Once they reached Missouri, the Corps had to deal with a different problem that they hadn’t run across yet. Resentment still lingered from the Civil War and Reconstruction politics, and the inhabitants of the former Confederate state had little hospitality to show to a group of Union soldiers and open hostility toward a group of Buffalo soldiers. Many of the residents refused to let the Corps camp on their farms.

Hostilities waned by the time the Bicycle Corps reached the outskirts of St. Louis, and on July 24, hundreds of members of local bicycle clubs came out to greet the soldiers and escort them into the city. The city and its inhabitants threw a parade for their guests and treated them like heroes. The St. Louis Star wrote about the journey of the Bicycle Corps, that it…

“…was the most marvelous cycling trip in the history of the wheel and the most rapid military march on record.”

In his report to the War Department, Moss later wrote that the experiment …

“…demonstrated that a bicycle corps could travel twice as fast as cavalry and infantry under the same topographical conditions, at one third the cost.”

He added,

“The bicycle has a number of advantages over the horse; it does not require as much care, it needs no forage, it moves much faster over fair roads…it is noiseless and raises but little dust, and it is impossible to determine its direction from its tracks.”

Despite the success of the Bicycle Corps’s experiment, the army disbanded the Corps when it returned to Fort Missoula, and there was no more serious consideration given to the idea. The country was on the cusp of the Spanish-American War. On April 10, 1898, the 25^th Infantry departed for Cuba via Tampa, Florida as the very first regiment in the army to be called into active duty in the war with Spain.