Right now in Marin County, California there is a literal treasure trove of early mountain bike history stashed away in a storage unit. It's a massive time capsule waiting to be shared with mountain bikers everywhere.

From the mid 1970's through 1992, Charlie Kelly saved everything he could find relating to
the sport of mountain biking. His well-preserved archive includes historic documents from
the earliest years and is especially weighted towards the 1980's, when mountain biking’s popularity exploded. It is the most complete collection of early mountain bike media in the world, some items from before it was even called mountain biking, and man being the only existing copy in existence. Most of the items haven't seen the light of day in over 25 years.

In 2017 a Kickstarter Campaign was started with the intention of digitizing Charlie's stash -- hundreds of thousands of historic documents -- and build a website capable of hosting and delivering them to the world, the resulting archive an indispensable tool for any historian or mountain biking enthusiast to explore and discover the depths of the sport’s history. The long-term goal is a growing database of material, where contributors around the globe can submit mountain biking content from ANY time period, and help preserve the history of the sport. As Charlie puts it, "This should eventually become the Library of Alexandria for everything related to mountain biking."

Unfortunately, we did not achieve our funding goal and did not recieve a dime from the effort.

Here in 2018 we have begun a GO FUND ME campaign because of a more desperate need for money. Each month Charlie pays around $300 simply to maintain this archive in storage. And being the old guy Charlie is, he's retired and does not not have much income to keep supporting this effort. Put another way $300 a month is not a huge burden, but it kinda is when you're retired and living on a fixed income.

So the GO FUND ME campaign is an opportunity for the Mountain Bike Community at large to contribute to perservation of this unique archive. Here's an idea of the items in Charlie's archive:

- Product catalogues from bike and component companies
- Newsletters from MTB clubs
- Collected articles about mountain biking
- Early race results
- Issues of every MTB Magazine published in the US (nearly every issue up to roughly 1992)
- Issues of nearly every MTB Mag from OTHER COUNTRIES! (in their original language)
- Every Issue of the Fat Tire Flyer (the world's very first MTB Publication)
- Photographic collections
- Race and product posters
- Original artwork
- Correspondence
- Unpublished articles and essays
- Collections donated by Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, and other MTB pioneers
...and more.

Many of the documents and photos represent the only surviving copy known to exist. It is truly remarkable to have all these materials still contained in one place, maintained by one person, and we have an opportunity to make it digitally accessible for future generations!

The LONG TERM GOAL is web-hosted access of the archive, free to the public. It should be a place for research, exploration, and inspiration. Users can step back in time and unearth fascinating and otherwise unavailable information, whether they’re restoring a classic bike, looking to relive early MTB memories, or just eager to learn about the past. The archive’s easily-discoverable treasures will allow users to gain new perspectives on mountain biking -- past, present, and future.

Creating this digital archive is no small task. The storage unit contains hundreds of thousands of documents, most of which are bound in some way. There will be months of work and expenses just to rent space and scan the documents with their corresponding metadata and word search capability. But this project is more than just scanning papers. The MTB Legacy Project will create a text-searchable archive, sortable by type of content, provenance, date, topic, and more. A website with search abilities and back end servers will be needed to host & access the massive database of documents. Simply put, it will require a lot of time and money.

It's a lot to accomplish and we're not sure when the entire project might be finished. But keeping the archive alive and getting Charlie scanning his content is the first step. Along the way, we will get a website going, access to the public and it will grow.

PLEASE take a few minutes to make a contribution and
become part of this living legacy of mountain biking ------->

View the VIDEO about this project HERE.