The Enthusiast Girl, Miss Vivian Bales, Harley-Davidson’s eternally lovely, fearless, and unwavering first lady was a pioneer American adventurer who defied the conventions of the Roaring Twenties and defined for herself and a century of riders since what it meant to be a woman and motorcyclist. In the Summer of 1929, Bales clocked over 5,000 miles alone on a Harley-Davidson Model D, the first in Milwaukee’s famed “45” lineage. Without as much as a single flat tire, Bales and her trusty Model D triumphed, both over the miles that lay behind her as well as the conventions that girls simply shouldn’t ride motorcycles. Throughout her 78-day, 5,000+ mile adventure covering 14 states, the White House in Washington D.C., and a bit Canada, Bales blazed a trail for all future female motorcyclists to become a good will ambassador for enthusiasts everywhere. She had shaken the hands of more mayors than she could count, met the President of the United States, the founders of the company she had chased her dream onboard, and charmed the hearts of thousands along the way.
An all-too-often forgotten founder of the Harley-Davidson racing dynasty, William Fred Brier, poses with his early 10K factory racer in Sioux City, Iowa, September 2, 1914. This remarkable image offers an early glimpse into the formative moments of the Harley-Davidson factory racing program as it took its first steps into the sport of professional racing in late 1914.
An Illinois native, Bill Brier worked as a mechanical engineer at the Aurora Automatic Machine and Tool Company, builders of Thor motorcycles, alongside the company’s chief designer and head of its racing department, William Ottaway. Once released from their production contract with Indian in 1907, Ottaway began working on new engine and motorcycle designs, leveraging the emerging sport of racing to test out his machines. With riders like Shorty Matthews, Paul Derkum, and Bill Brier, Thor began building a reputation in the sport and a growing presence in the industry. Thor, along with Indian, Merkel, and Excelsior, were the brands that established the sport of motorcycle racing in America and created a thriving industry by the early teens.
Pictured here, 26-year-old Paul “Daredevil” Derkum poses on board a slightly modified, first-year production Indian twin to promote the races at Agriculture Park on September 9th, 1907. Already a recognized figure among the earliest class of American motorcycle racers, Derkum stood at the forefront of a sport still defining itself as one of its first true celebrities. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, Derkum arrived in Los Angeles with his family in 1890 and quickly took to bicycle racing, a culture then sweeping the nation. He became a fixture in the city’s growing cycling scene, working alongside his brother in a bicycle shop and spending long hours at the dusty oval of Agricultural Park. There, amid the gamblers and sporting men who crowded the grounds, he likely crossed paths with Will Risden, another young bicycle dealer and racer whose influence, together with Derkum, would shape the course of motorcycling on the West Coast.
On the warm autumn evening of October 21, 1912, beneath the arc lights of the Lake Cliff Motordrome in Dallas, Texas, a stadium full of racing enthusiasts witnessed a miracle on the boards. The country was still in shock as the tragedy at the Valisburg Motordrome occurred only weeks before, on September 8. The horrific and now infamous crash, the precursor of the “murderdrome” moniker, claimed the lives of Indian racing stars Johnny Albright and local Texan hero Eddie Hasha, along with 6 spectators, 5 of whom were teenage boys. In the weeks that followed the Valisburg track shutdown, papers nationwide ran stories about the carnage, and an outcry for improved safety standards prompted organizers and promoters to implement new rules and infrastructure. For the riders, however, racing was their livelihood, and though their friends had just perished, death was just another aspect of their daily lives and most were eager to get back onto the boards.
