Historic Bike Ride and Earth Day Celebration

The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) will host its first-ever Historic Bike Ride and Earth Day Celebration on Saturday, April 22, 2023. The program will consist of a group bike ride featuring history talks, followed by a family-friendly Earth Day Celebration at the NHA’s Pony Field (10 Mill Street), free and open to all.

Programming will begin at 9am at the Whaling Museum, with Harvey Young of Young’s Bike Shop talking about the history of bicycles on Nantucket. He will incorporate historic documents from the NHA archive and his family’s collection of antique bikes in this show-and-tell talk before riders depart on a guided bike ride. The ride will follow a planned route to the Quaise Asylum Burial Ground in Polpis, where Frances Karttunen and Allen Reinhard will be on-site to talk about the history of the asylum and cemetery as various bikers arrive.

Biking participants will then ride back to town and end at one of the NHA’s historic properties, the Eleanor Ham Pony Field, where an Earth Day Celebration will take place. Families unable to participate in the bike ride are welcome to join the celebration in the Pony Field from 10:30am to 12:30pm. This portion of the program will include educational activities and displays from various island organizations – all promoting appreciation for natural life and the environment.

The rain date for this event is scheduled for Sunday, April 23, at the same time.