Meeting people on singletrack brings you a little closer to them. In recent years mountain bike trail advocates have increasingly needed to defend the legitimacy of bicycling on singletrack trails. As land agencies have moved forward with a variety of recreational planning processes, some officials and citizens have objected to singletrack bicycling, and have suggested that bicyclists should be satisfied with riding on roads - paved and dirt surfaced. This viewpoint misunderstands the nature of mountain bicycling and the desires of bicyclists.
Bike riding on narrow, natural surface trails is as old as the bicycle.
In its beginning, all bicycling was essentially mountain biking, because bicycles predate paved roads. In many historic photographs from the late 19th-century, people are shown riding bicycles on dirt paths. During World War II the Swiss Army outfitted companies of soldiers with bicycles to more quickly travel on narrow trails through mountainous terrain. When the mass production of mountain bikes started in the early 1980's, more and more bicyclists found their way into the backcountry on narrow trails. The geometry of mountain bikes was changed to improve handling on narrow trails.