Bentonville, Arkansas, is one of the weirdest places that I have ever been. When you think of New York City, Tokyo, Paris, or Rome, you can picture those cities clearly. You know what to expect and what you will see, and that it will be packed with millions of tourists. You know that you will see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Statue of Liberty in NYC, and the leaning tower in Pisa. But what will you see in Bentonville, Arkansas?
Bikes. Thousands and thousands of bikes.
In 2007, the Walton family (heirs to Walmart’s fortune) began leading the charge toward building biking trails around Bentonville. Why? Because Tom and Steuart Walton loved mountain biking, and they wanted to bring it to their hometown.
A cyclist rides passed the Walmart Museum in downtown Bentonville
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Bentonville, nestled in the rolling hills of Northwest Arkansas, has undergone a dramatic transformation since 2000, growing from roughly 38,000 residents to more than 63,000 today, a number that increases even higher during cycling season.
It is an odd place with quite a few dichotomies, but it is also one of – if not the – best cycling cities that I have ever been to.
When you hear “Arkansas,” what springs to mind? Southern comfort food, Razorback football or maybe the Netflix seriesm Ozark? Until recently, that was the extent of the state’s identity for many outsiders. But today, a fast-growing share of visitors associate Arkansas with something entirely different: world-class mountain bike trails and a thriving cycling culture, amplified by Bentonville’s bold claim as the “mountain bike capital of the world.”
We’ll get to the cycling culture in a second, but let’s first talk about the town itself. What once was a southern farming community is now a rapidly modernising hub with an unexpectedly rich culture. And I don’t just mean culturally rich—I mean financially rich, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.
(Image credit: Arkansas Tourism)
The city’s reinvention, funded by Walmart’s heirs, is anything but organic growth. It’s a corporate masterplan. Millions of dollars have been poured into the city in recent years, transforming a once-sleepy Arkansas town into a hub for multi-millionaires and international corporations.
Of course, not everyone in Bentonville welcomes the influx of wealth and…