In his first job in western Colorado, 21-year-old John Kiefer went to work as a salesman for the Fruita Mercantile Co., traveling between Fruita, Colorado, and Green River, Utah, by bicycle.

The only smooth road, however, was the railroad between the two communities.

“I was to travel by bicycle along the railroad right-of-way, a distance of 70 or 80 miles,” Kiefer wrote in 1958. The actual distance from Fruita to Green River by rail is almost 90 miles.

The bicycle he was to use “was quite a contraption,” Kiefer added. “ You could ride the rails something like a hand car, such as the section men use. It had an attachment that reached from one rail to the other by a connecting rod. It had two small wheels (in addition to its main wheels) with ‘V’ shaped rims that straddled the rails and t

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