In the biking world, Memorial Day weekend has many functions. It signals white pants transition from fashion faux-pas to temporarily acceptable, it ushers in the start of the mountain bike season and it hosts one of the most iconic events in the Durango area – the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. This year, the event has enlisted expert weather backup to ensure it goes off as planned.

Iron Horse Bicycles was founded in Islandia, New York back in 1987 and the company was known for making high-quality competitive and recreational bikes using some of the best technology at a very reasonable price point. Their stable of riders included UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Championship winners Dave Cullinan and Sam Hill.

In 2009 the company declared bankruptcy and was bought by Dorel Industries, a multi-national corporation that owns several brands under its bicycle division called Dorel Sports. Dorel Sports owns Pacific Cycle, the brand that produced Iron Horse bikes, as well as Caloi, Schwinn, GT Bicycles and Mongoose among others. Since 2009 no one has been producing Iron Horse bikes, and they can be found only on the second-hand market today. Some bikes are marked as “iron horse” with a silver shield on the frame, but these are fakes.