During the last Rotary Club meeting, a special program was invited to speak. Jeff Emsweller wrote and submitted the following story on that presentation.
In 1924, a group of local Greensburg boys—Hubert Wickens, Clinton Fogg, Tootie Hamilton, Bill Day, and Alden Westhafer—set off on a remarkable adventure. Sponsored by the YMCA, the teenagers rode their bicycles from Greensburg, IN., all the way to Mammoth Cave, KY., and then turned around and rode home again. They carried tents and bedrolls, cooked their own meals, and were told that $15 would be plenty of spending money. It wasn’t.
According to the diary of Bill Corya’s grandfather, the group ran out of money long before they reached home and survived on the kindness of strangers, who fed, housed, and even wired extra funds to them.
Addressing members of the Greensburg Rotary Club 3437, District 6580, Bill Corya offered a lively and detailed account of this century-old journey—and his own modern-day reenactment of it.
“During the COVID shutdowns, my cousin David kept repeating, ‘We have to reenact that trip,’” Corya said. “I eventually agreed, bought a used bike in Dayton, Ohio—because local shops were sold out—and began training on the quiet backroads of Decatur County. The more we prepared, the more impressed we became with the toughness of the 1924 riders. Their bikes were heavy, single-speed machines, and nearly every road south of Greensburg was dirt or gravel.”
The reenactment team consisted of Bill, David, Matt Westhafer, Mike Wilkie (a descendant of one of the original riders), and their essential support driver, Robert Wickens. They began their ride at the Greensburg Courthouse, just as the boys had in 1924.
Using old highway maps, the cyclists traced the most likely route through Burney, Hope, Columbus, Seymour, New Albany, and into Kentucky.
“In a delightful stroke of historical coincidence, a 1919 map I found even labeled the southern road continuation as ‘To Mammoth Cave,’” Corya said.
Over four days, the riders covered roughly 230 miles, taking advantage of modern comforts—GPS, lightweight bicycles, and a support vehicle never far behind. Even with these advantages, the trip included its share of misadventures: gravel roads that maps never warned about, a sand-filled trail ending abruptly in a wall of brush, and a memorable moment when they had to hoist their bikes over tree limbs and ride straight across a Louisville golf course. “No one stopped us,” Corya laughed.
The toughest stretch came in Kentucky, climbing the long ridge near Fort Knox, followed by the rolling hills leading into Mammoth Cave National Park. But the challenge was worth it.
“The reward was standing at the historic cave entrance, just as the original riders had done,” Corya said. “Then celebrating afterward with family—perhaps a little too enthusiastically, judging from the empty bottles and snacks we found on the ground the next morning.”
While the modern team rode only one direction and the original boys rode both, retracing their path gave Corya and his companions a renewed appreciation for the grit, resourcefulness, and sense of adventure those teenagers possessed.
“They were 16 and 17 years old, navigating mud roads, heat, and mechanical trouble with almost no money—yet they made the journey and returned with stories that have lasted nearly a century,” Corya said.
Reenacting their trip reminded the group just how powerful local history can be. “And how much we can learn from the curiosity and courage of those who came before us,” Corya said. “It was more than a bike ride; it was a way to connect with family, community, and a remarkable moment in Greensburg’s past.”
