MARION — Downtown Selma will once again provide one of the final stops for those cyclists participating in the annual Samford University Old 100 Bike Ride, scheduled for Saturday, April 21.

An event that aims to celebrate the university’s history, which includes it’s roots based at Judson College in Marion, also raises money for Sowing Seeds of Hope, a partnership between Perry County and Alabama Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The partnership seeks to improve the quality of life and work in Perry County through “improved educational opportunities, health care, tourism, transportation and economic development.”

The event features routes with distances ranging from 30 miles to 100 miles. The 100-mile route — a route for those called Century Riders — will have as its last stop the Selma-Dallas County Public Library in downtown Selma.

Riders begin at Judson College and ride through downtown Marion, past Marion Military Institute, former home of Howard College. Riders will head west for 15 miles through the Perry County countryside to Newbern, home to the Rural Studio project of Auburn University. Thirty-mile riders will return to Marion by the same route.

Proceeding north in Hale County, riders will pass through downtown Greensboro on the broad, tree-lined Main Street with its many homes of distinctive architecture—Greek Revival, Federal, Victorian, Gothic Revival—and onto the grounds of Magnolia Grove, built circa 1838 and the ancestral home of Admiral Richmond Hobson, hero of the Spanish-American War. All riders then return to Marion by way of a stop in Folsom at Holmstead, Alabama’s longest continually running plantation, which has been in the same family since the early 1800s. The 45-mile route ends back at Judson.

Century and 75-mile riders continue through Marion and southward, across the Cahaba River and the Perry Lakes wetlands region to Suttle before splitting: either to return to Marion or to proceed into Dallas County for the final stop at the Selma-Dallas County Public Library. Century riders will be rewarded with views of historic structures, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge and cemeteries framed by live oak trees draped with Spanish moss. The return to Marion takes riders through sweeping farm and pastureland.

On-site registration at Judson College will begin at 8 a.m., with the mass start scheduled for 9 a.m. The ride begins and ends on the grounds of Judson College in Marion.

A dinner will be served from 2-5 p.m., and hot dogs will be available beginning at noon.

The registration cost for those registering before April 13 is $35, while those registering after April 13 will pay $45. There is a student rate of $15 and residents in Perry, Hale and Dallas counties only have to pay $10. For more information, including online registration information, log on to howard.samford.edu/oldhoward.