Frank Hart, Forgotten American Sports Legend

Back in the late 1860s-70s, America was gripped by a strange passion for an even stranger sport…

It was called Pedestrianism…and is exactly what it sounds like, competitive walking.

This drew in huge crowds in New York City’s Madison Square Garden (called Gilmore’s Garden at the time), where competitors completed circuits on a 1/8th mile track.

Madison Square Garden today:

“Races” would typically run for six days straight, where competitors would complete walks of up to 450 miles.

Huge crowds of adoring fans were drawn to the “races.” If you couldn’t afford a ticket, it was not unheard of to break windows or climb on the roof of the arena to try to get a view of the fascinating activity below.

But the whole fad of competitive walking actually started outdoors by a local newspaper employee named Edward Payson Weston who made a bet that he could walk all the way from Boston to Washington D.C. in 1860.