When people talk about Tom Mayer, when stories are written, a couple of things often are missed.

One is that he wasn’t just some guy who rode his bicycle to Silverton on a whim. Since childhood he was a bike nut. Still is. He took things apart, put them back together, and eventually his inventions landed him in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.

A bit less important to the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic story is that as a youth, on top of helping mom and dad produce and package honey from their 1,000 bee colonies, he was also a pig rancher.

By his teens, Mayer was deeply into bicycling. Deeply into it. With a few assorted friends, he cruised the roads and backwoods trails. An engineer in the making, he tinkered with bicycles, developing a 120-speed (seriously!) bike that would climb just about anything that wasn’t a cliff.

About this series

This year marks the 50th running of the annual Durango-to-Silverton race pitting bikes against train. Ed Zink, who promoted and fostered the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic from the start in 1972, died in October 2019. He was eagerly anticipating the 50th anniversary, and this Memorial Day weekend’s festival is being held in his memory.

In conjunction with the Iron Horse organizing committee and as part of its 50th celebration, former Durango Herald writer and editor John Peel put together a series of stories looking back at the race and ride’s history. These stories and more were compiled in a book, “Iron Horse Bicycle Classic 50th Anniversary: Looking Back, Racing Forward.”

For most locals, he rode too far. So he’d first finish his weekend century ride, then gather with local club members for a shorter ride. He found the highway ride to Silverton exhilarating, as well as being a beautiful high-altitude workout. Tom discovered he could beat the train from Durango to Silverton – that boast to his older brother, Jim, a brakeman on the train, is legendary – but he wasn’t satisfied.

“I loved going to Silverton but I couldn’t get anybody to go with me,” Mayer said recently from his home in Albuquerque, where he has lived since moving from Durango in early 1972. “I know how to solve that,” he finally realized, “we’ll just put on a race.”

After the State Patrol responded “hell no!” when he requested their blessing, he approached Ed Zink, a schoolmate at Durango High School who in 1968 had opened a sporting goods store, The Outdoorsman. Mayer was doing bike repair jobs on the side, and sometimes bought parts from Zink’s store. Mayer hoped Zink could be more persuasive with the State Patrol.

It was the spring of 1972. The train started up Memorial Day weekend, and, with any luck, so did tourism. Zink’s first response was also less than promising. “When I told him my idea, he thought I was nuts,” Mayer said.

But Zink was attracted to big ideas. After mulling it over, it came to him:

A race against the train. Up and over a spectacular stretch of highway. On Memorial Day weekend, when the town needed a boost to kick off the tourist season. It could be a community event, part of Narrow Gauge Days, and it might even help him sell some Schwinns.

“It all fit together,” Mayer said.

Zink convinced the State Patrol about the community aspect, and the event was on.

“Without him,” Mayer said of Zink, “it never would have happened.”

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The Mayer family moved the already renowned Honeyville from Duarte, outside Los Angeles, in 1954 because father Joe and mother Mercedes thought it was getting too crowded and too smoggy. (Family legend says that they ended up at the current Honeyville location north of Durango because Joe misread a sign; he only saw the “For Sale” part of a sign that said, “For Sale, Eggs,” but still convinced the couple there to sell. If Joe reads that sign correctly, does the Iron Horse ever happen?)

“I wouldn’t trade growing up at Honeyville for any amount of money,” said Tom Mayer, who has three brothers and three sisters. “It was a great upbringing.”

With lumber left over from a film set of “Around the World in 80 Days” at Rockwood – Joe Mayer is an extra in three scenes from the 1956 movie – young Tom and the Mayers built a 12-by-20-foot shed to contain as many as 100 pigs that he kept fed and watered.

The Denver & Rio Grande Western was a big part of the Mayer family’s life. Tracks ran behind their house at Honeyville, so the siblings would run up and wave at the passengers when it went by. They’d bring fresh squash to the pilot of the putt-putt car that followed. The train employed Tom’s three brothers at various times.

Tom started mountain biking in 1963 with the Feller brothers. A common ride was Hermosa Creek, often done up and back, often with Danny Feller. Their adapted road bikes, with 1 3/8-inch tires, had to handle much rougher and more primitive conditions than are encountered today. Hoisting 40-pound bikes over their shoulders, they waded across Hermosa in several spots.

Mayer figured out a way to have four sprockets on the front, six on the rear. With a five-speed hub, that gave him 120 possible gear combinations. Later he created a “Mountain Tamer Quad” four-sprocket crankset that he began selling in 1987. And still sells. Inventions such as the Quad earned him a place in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 1992. Coincidentally, that was the same year Zink was enshrined in the Hall.

The 1967 Durango High School grad finished college in Phoenix, then returned briefly to Durango in the early 1970s. Just about anyone on a bike would hear from Tom, “Hey, we’re starting a club. You oughta come join us.”

Tom sometimes rode his bike along with the train. In a way, it was a chance to spend some time with Jim, since Jim was on it daily. When Tom told Jim he could beat the train to Silverton on his bike, Jim was wholly unconvinced. The next day when the train steamed past Honeyville, Tom jumped on his Schwinn Paramount, which he’d procured through The Outdoorsman with Zink’s suggestion after his original Schwinn’s frame broke. (Tom dusted off the Paramount to bring to Durango for Saturday’s 50th anniversary ride.)

At that time the highway followed what is now East Animas Road (County Road 250), making a steep climb up to the big turn at Shalona Lake. It was this section of road that nearly ended Tom’s love of bikes, and nearly killed him. He was 15 when he zipped down from Shalona Lake, pedaling furiously with high gearing he’d created. He says he reached 65 mph when the bike began to shimmy. It jackknifed, and launched him down the road, skin scraping off his unprotected arms, legs, chest and back. After a kind passerby in a Cadillac took the bloodied boy home, “I laid down in bed and went into shock.”

After passing Shalona Lake on the day of the bet, Tom lost track of the train as it disappeared to parallel the river canyon. He’d timed his ride to Silverton, and knew that barring a mechanical issue he would easily outpace the train. Sure enough, Tom was in Silverton when the train arrived.

Jim found a Baby Ruth to settle the bet, and invited Tom to lunch. But Tom didn’t want to stop and tighten up. He continued up to Howardsville and Eureka, then grunted back home over Molas and Coal Bank.

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With the 1972 race set, Mayer began to organize from Albuquerque. He contacted his cycling friends in Phoenix and Tucson; other Durangoans had connections in Denver and Salt Lake City. Only 36 riders made it that first year, but many more would show up in 1973.

Mayer spent some time asking Silverton merchants for prize donations. Several offered jewelry or knickknacks, and Rick Scarborough, then owner of the Iron Horse Chuckwagon in Silverton, offered a free lunch to anyone who beat the train. Mayer finished fourth overall in that first Iron Horse race, and was one of five rivers who arrived in Silverton before the locomotive.

Mayer settled in as an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, where, among other things, he worked on developing all-terrain robotic vehicles. He never stopped riding and tinkering with bicycles. He’s now on East Mountain Regional Trail Council there, planning and working on trails. He often mountain bikes in the Sandia Mountains.

Both Tom and Jim Mayer returned to Durango in 2011 for the ride and festivities surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. Jim now lives in Montrose. His daughter, cycling aficionado Melissa Mayer, lives in Durango with husband Chris Wherry, a former U.S. road cycling champion.

Jim took his historic place on the train in 2011, while Tom Mayer and Ed Zink cycled off with 2,500 others toward Silverton.

Tom and Ed didn’t ride the whole way together, but met at the top of Molas Pass. They rode together from there, down a highway devoid of traffic and recently swept of gravel. Tom hit 45 mph and noticed Ed was right there with him.

“We pulled up into town and here’s 3,300 people in the park,” Mayer said. “People coming up and saying, ‘Hey, thanks for starting this race. You changed my life.’ That was the biggest reward.”

Mayer turned to Zink, “One person CAN make a difference.”

Zink smiled in agreement.