The Frisco Hill Stone

This granite stone marks the crest of Frisco Hill, once the most dreaded climb on a famous bicycle route. The Saint Louis Cycling Club, founded in eighteen eighty-seven and the oldest cycling club in the country, used to ride a rough and scenic road of about forty miles from downtown out toward De Soto. The hardest stretch of all was right here, and a full round trip often meant staying overnight.

Beginning in nineteen nineteen, the club started planting permanent stone markers, like tombstones, along their favorite routes, part destination, part trophy. Frisco Hill got the very first one. Four were eventually set between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty-four, but two of them disappeared over the years, this hill's among them. In two thousand nineteen, a local historical society set a fresh stone here, restoring a small monument to the early age of the bicycle.