Trail Markers, Tin Coffee Cans, and a Code Nobody Can Crack: Chasing the 1978 Mystery Riders

Every hobby community has an origin story. Ours, depending on who you ask, involves a fog-drenched morning in the fall of 1978, a dozen knobby-tired bicycles, and four letters spray-painted onto a State Forest boundary post: OH Wa FG.

We did not invent this story. Honestly, we wish we had — it would've saved us a lot of gas money.

The Marker That Started Everything

In 2019, a trail maintenance volunteer named Dale Prentiss was clearing brush near Mohican when he pried loose a rotting wooden post and found, stenciled underneath decades of grime, the same four letters that appear on the water tower in his childhood photos. He posted a photo to a Facebook group for Ohio trail history. The comments section never recovered.

Within weeks, people were reporting similar markers in Hocking Hills, along the old towpath near Canal Fulton, and — most tantalizingly — at a closed segment of trail outside Chagrin Falls where the paint, according to one poster, "looked way too fresh for 1978."

The prevailing theory: a loose collective of off-road cyclists, riding before fat tires were cool (or, technically, before fat tires existed as a product category), marked their unofficial routes with a code. Nobody could agree on what it stood for. Some said "Ohio Wandering and Far-Going." One person insisted it was a lodge joke. Another swore it stood for something unprintable in a family newsletter.

We Asked the Archivists. The Archivists Asked Us to Leave.

The Ohio History Connection's manuscript division has no record of any bicycle club by that name or any name resembling it, registered or unregistered, between 1970 and 1985. A helpful archivist named Ruth — who asked us to note she was speaking for herself and not the institution — put it this way: "I can tell you what doesn't exist. What I can't tell you is why forty people are convinced it does."

Fair. But forty people is a lot of people.

The Witness, If You Can Call Him That

The closest thing to a firsthand account comes from Earl Jankowiak, 81, of Massillon, who claims he "rode with them twice, maybe three times" in the summer of '78. Earl describes a group that met before dawn, rode routes that didn't appear on any map, and communicated through tin coffee cans zip-tied to fence posts containing the next leg of the ride.

"They weren't a club," Earl told us over pie at a truck stop outside Wadsworth. "Clubs have dues. These people had thermoses and a grudge against pavement."

Asked what OH Wa FG meant, Earl took a long pause, finished his pie, and said, "If I told you, you'd stop looking."

We have thought about that sentence an unhealthy amount.

The Skeptic's Case — And It's Stronger Than Ours

Not everyone's buying it. Retired OSU lecturer Dr. Marion Vance has spent more time debunking the Mystery Riders than most believers have spent chasing them. Her argument is tidy: the paint formulations found on the markers date to the mid-1980s at the earliest. The 1978 date, she argues, was retrofitted to give the legend a birthday.

"It's an inside joke that outgrew the inside," she told us. "Somebody started it, probably as a lark, and now it has better documentation than some real clubs. That's Ohio for you."

When we pointed out that our own website's name matches the markers exactly — a coincidence we genuinely cannot explain — Dr. Vance laughed for a long time and said, "Sure it does. Sure it does."

So Did They Exist?

Here's our honest verdict: probably not in any way that would survive a fact-check, and absolutely in every way that matters.

Real or invented, the Mystery Riders gave a scattered bunch of trail nerds, history buffs, and conspiracy enthusiasts a reason to talk to each other. Dale still organizes an annual ride retracing the alleged 1978 route. Attendance doubles every year. Somebody always brings tin coffee cans.

If any original members are out there — and Earl, we're looking at you — the comments are open. And if you know what the letters stand for?

Keep it to yourself a little longer. The ride's better that way.