People Riding Through Trees

What was up with past Americans' fascination with riding vehicles through large trees? I know that Sequoia National Park used to have a tree you could drive through. Then, while browsing the archival materials of various libraries this evening, I found this:

163-165: "Bicycle Tree" near Snohomish, Washington

3 photographs3.5" x 5.5"

Photographs of people and a car near the "Bicycle Tree," a large cedar tree with a archway cut into its trunk, along a dirt road in what is now Snohomish, Washington. The tree had served as a milestone on a favorite bicycling route in the 1880s when Snohomish Bicycle Club president David Lewis Paramore led the effort to have a pathway cut through the massive trunk. The tree, compromised by floodwaters from the Snohomish River and buffeted by gusting winds, toppled in 1927.

Wow, riding a bike inside a tree. That sounds like the greatest thing ever.