One of America’s first spectator sports was professional walking

[Still Waters]

In the 1870s and 1880s, an unlikely assemblage of Americans became some of the nation’s earliest celebrities with the rise of the pedestrianism movement.

These professional walkers traversed hundreds of miles, around tracks and across state lines, to compete in one of the nation’s first spectator sports. Though the craze was short-lived, it left behind a legacy that challenges the stereotypical face of fitness to this day.

American pedestrianism began with a fateful bet: In 1860, the door-to-door bookseller Edward Payson Weston wagered a friend that Abraham Lincoln would lose the upcoming presidential election. Were Lincoln to win, Weston declared, he would walk the 478 miles from his home in Boston to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration—and he would do so in under ten days.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-of-americas-first-spectator-sports-was-professional-walking-180985397/