The “Camelback” himself, Otto Walker posing onboard a Harley-Davidson Banjo 2-Cam factory racing machine on the boards of the Los Angeles Motor Speedway in Beverly Hills, California, April 24, 1921.
It was his distinctive posture, the way his long back arched high above his shoulders when he tucked in on Harley-Davidson, that earned him the nickname "Camelback." Harry Otto Walker was and will forever be one of America's most popular and recognizable motorcycle racers for a good reason. He was one of the first racers handpicked by Harley-Davidson's Bill Ottaway in 1914 as he began forming the Motor Co.'s first factory racing program. It was Walker who won the first official factory victory at the International Grand Prize 300-Mile Road Race in Venice on April 11th, 1915. Walker became a staple member of a racing team so determined and competent that they earned the Wrecking Crew name. He led the way, winning championships, earning podiums, and breaking records across the country throughout the teens. Between 1915 and 1918, the California native racked up over a dozen first-place finishes and dozens more podiums and speed records, including a significant first place for the Motor Co. at the Dodge City 300-Mile race in July 1915.
Otto Walker was already unique in the racing world, standing over 6 feet tall, but he always seemed to set himself apart throughout his career. Whether it was his highly arched back and nickname, or his crested German aviator's helmet which he brought home from the front in Europe, or his bright white factory racing machine, if Otto Walker was running, everyone knew it. Though he was tall and stylish, Walker focused above all else on his ability to win races, and his reputation as a champion preceded him through his life. His character was somewhat reserved for a man capable of such speed, a trait which can be seen in accounts of his contentious relationship with young hotshots like Shrimp Burns over the years. However, by all accounts, Walker was a gentleman, a fierce competitor, and a natural leader.
When the war in Europe forced America to call upon its best, Walker answered by enlisting in the newly formed U.S. Army Air Service, where he served as an aviation electrician in France from May 1918 until his return on August 28th, 1919. Once racing resumed following its suspension during the war, Bill Ottaway rebuilt the legendary Wrecking Crew and tapped the "Camelback" to lead as the team captain. On Labor Day 1919, within just weeks of his return home, Walker placed third in the M&ATA's International 200 Mile Motorcycle Championship Road Race in Marion, Indiana, America's unofficial return to professional motorcycle competition. The older and wiser Walker became a cornerstone for the Harley-Davidson program, a figurehead during their most successful and dominant period at the height of Class A competition. He finished out the 1919 season with wins and records in Atlanta, Sheepshead Bay, and Los Angeles. He continued his campaign into 1920, what would be the first full season since the war. Walker marked up wins in the 100-Mile and 50-Mile National Championship races at Ascot Park on January 4th, followed by more podiums and records in Daytona, Portland, Hammond, Kings County, and a repeat of his 100-Mile Championship win in Marion, Indiana. Though Walker and the other members of the Wrecking Crew found plenty of success, Walker himself dealt with constant mechanical gremlins, smaller fairground venues, and a couple of spills. However, by 1921 everything was in place for a full-fledged return to Class A motorcycle racing in America, and Walker was ready.
To kick things off, Walker wrung dry the throttle of his Milwaukee 8-Valve on the boards at Fresno that February, breaking through the 100 mph ceiling in competition for the first time and smashing records at 1, 10, 15, and 50 miles. Walker's record time in the 50-Mile trial remains the fastest at that distance in the history of board track racing, and he was the first in the world to hit the 100 mph in competition. The machine on which he reached such speeds has become that of legend among modern enthusiasts and collectors. An exceedingly rare, powerful, and long-since coveted 8-Valve Harley-Davidson. It was the mount used by Walker and the Wrecking Crew on the majority of the milestone victories in the early '20s.
Designed by Bill Ottaway with help from famed British engine wizard Harry Ricardo in the mid-teens, Harley's overhead-valve platform had evolved significantly by 1919 when the version seen in this photo was introduced. These machines represented the bleeding edge of mechanical capability of the era. To increase power and maximum rpm, Ottaway tinkered away during the war years and developing a dual camshaft assembly to operate the valves and reduce the machine's reciprocating weight. The earliest version of this came complete with a cam chest cover resembling the drumhead of a banjo, giving these rare machines their nickname of the Banjo-case 2-Cam. This 61ci 2-Cam platform was run with both pocket-valve and overhead-valve top ends and were fit inside Harley's short-coupled keystone frames. The combination proved fast for the team in 1919 and 1920, but by 1921 both Walker and the 2-Cam were truly dialed in.
Walker's accomplishments onboard his 2-Cam in Fresno garnered a lot of attention for Harley-Davidson, produced one of the most iconic images in motorcycle racing history, and set the tone for the 1921 season. It is arguably the best year of racing the Harley-Davidson Motor Company has ever had as they won nearly every National Championship title and broke almost every record to date, all with Walker at the head of the team. From Fresno, Walker and the rest of the Wrecking Crew headed south to Los Angeles for the grand opening of Jack Prince's latest board track speedway. The Los Angeles Motor Speedway was a massive, 275-acre, 1.25-mile oval, completed at the cost of $500,000, provided by General Motors. Though the track opened officially in February 1920, it hosted only automobile events, and the M&ATA's National Championship races on April 24th, 1921, were the first for motorcycles at the impressive new venue. This photo of Otto Walker and the Banjo 2-Cam was taken that day in the pits at Beverly Hills.
The "Big Three" manufacturers sent their best men and machines for the event. Harley-Davidson sent their big guns, a line up of five 8-Valve Banjo 2-Cam's ridden by Ralph Hepburn, Ray Weishaar, Fred Ludlow, Jim Davis, and of course, Otto Walker. Excelsior sent a trio of equally rare and powerful overhead cam twins ridden by Joe Wolters, J.A. McNeil, and Wells Bennett. Indian's ringer Shrimp Burns was on hand with one of their proven 8-valve machines and was joined by Gene Walker and Curley Fredericks onboard the factory's side-valve Power plus platform. There were two privateer entries, Red Cogburn playing the dark horse's role dressed in all black and riding an appropriately matched black machine simply titled the Ray Day special, the other privateer being N. Cooper on a machine listed as the B.B special. It was, perhaps, Ray Creviston though who ran the rarest of the exceedingly rare motorcycles at Beverly Hills that day, as he jockeyed the Cyclone-powered Reading-Standard overhead cam machine, a one-off beast which disappeared almost as soon as it was built.
The deck was stacked in terms of talent and technology for the Beverly Hills race, and as the grandstands filled on April 24th, the atmosphere was electric. The crowd's enthusiasm was unmatched, the stands were packed, and the infield filled with automobiles and airplanes. The Great War was over, the fourth and final wave of the Spanish Flu had subsided, and though booze was in short supply, America was more prosperous than it had ever been, and spirits were high. In an article originally published in Motorcycle Illustrated on May 5th, 1921, the scene was described as follows.
"A crowd of 12,000 thoroughly sophisticated followers of track speed events stood up on its hind legs and howled, threw hats in the air, stamped them underfoot, clapped their neighbors on their backs with resounding thumps and otherwise went crazy over the exhibitions of daring riding and terrific speed staged by the world's motorcycle speed devils on the Beverly Hills mile and a quarter Speedway, Los Angeles, April 24th."
Adding to the spectacle, perhaps inspired by the glitz and glamour of a blooming Hollywood, or possibly in an attempt to further separate themselves from the field of capable speedsters, the Harley-Davidson crew stepped onto the boards in Beverly Hills in a burst of colorful jerseys and machines. Each of the five Wrecking Crew team members straddled newly painted Banjo 2-Cam OHV machines with matching jerseys. Ralph Hepburn wore an orange and white jersey with a matching orange machine. Ray Weishaar wore a red jersey with white sleeves, though his mount was still in olive drab. The new recruit, a young Jim Davis, wore green and white to match his green machine, and the ever debonaire Fred Ludlow mounted a baby blue Harley and wore a blue jersey with white sleeves and a leather helmet painted white to match. The man of the hour, the shining white knight of the Motor Co., Otto Walker mounted a freshly painted white bike trimmed in purple striping, with a white sleeved, purple jersey.
The event began with a 13-mile Miss-and-Out event, a race where the last across the line of each lap was eliminated. Walker was set to win, but in a last-minute tactic, Shrimp Burns took to the top of the banking on the last turn, shooting down the slope and holding wide open to pass Walker across the line by inches. In the 25-Mile Championship, Burns and Walker again went tire to tire until Burns's Indian seized on the 11th lap while running nearly 110 mph. Burns went down hard but could limp himself over to the infield hospital to address the multiple splinters and lacerations inflicted by the timbers. Walker went on to win the 25-Mile race and set a new record of 104.43 mph for the distance, becoming the fastest man of the day. In the next race, the 50-Mile, Curley Fredericks, another of the Indian team, went down equally as hard, and Harley's new recruit Jim Davis took the win. Ralph Hepburn actually had the field by two laps during the race, but a flat crippled his lead, and he came in just behind Davis. The amateur field was full of privateers buzzing around the track onboard their own Harley-Davidson's, no doubt admiring the factory lineup along. Alfred Ashton was the only amateur competing not onboard the Milwaukee mark; he ran a Henderson 4 and took home the 10-mile race. As the day drew to a close, the crowd jumped to their feet and cheered to welcome a heavily bandaged but undeterred Shrimp Burns back to the track. Burns's 8-Valve Indian didn't fare as well as he did after their spill, but Frederick's Power Plus was without a rider and ready for action. The final event was a 15-mile consolation race and again became a neck-and-neck battle between Indian and Harley-Davidson. Much like he had done against Walker in the 25-Mile, Burns held tight to the front of the pack until the final lap. Then, on the final lap, he climbed up the banking on the last turn and shot down, past Harley's Ralph Hepburn, who was in the lead and across the line by only inches for the win.
Burns was no doubt the hero of the day, given his determination, skill, and resilience. Still, in his purple jersey, Otto Walker claimed the fastest lap, highest speed, most laps led, and most records broken along with his win in the 25-Mile Championship onboard his white 2-Cam in Beverly Hills. However, the machine he sits atop in the photo is not his white Harley-Davidson. For the race, each machine was given number plates for the front, and the lower fork arm, Walker, of course, was number one. Those plates had not yet been applied at the time of this photo, possibly taken as the riders assembled for practice laps. Given the lack of color, limited images from the event, and lack of discernible features between the machines, Walker is likely straddling Ray Weishaar's olive drab bike as the light striping on the other's would be more apparent.
Nevertheless, each factory rider's machines, by all accounts, were essentially the same except for color. While we are on the topic of colors, the racer in the background is most likely Walker's teammate Fred Ludlow based on his lightly colored jersey, which was baby blue and the lightest of the Harley squad. It also should be noted that the date printed on the image, for whatever reason, has the year listed in the second position and the day in the third. One last point to mention, Film from that day in Beverly Hills has survived, making it one of but a few exceptionally rare glimpses of board track racing in action that we have. That film footage can be viewed on the Archive Moto Youtube Channel HERE.
The Harley-Davidson Wrecking Crew would go on to ride these Banjo 2-Cam's in various configurations, scoring wins, podiums, and records over the coming two seasons, including big team wins in Dodge City later that summer. Otto Walker remained a central figure to the Milwaukee team, returning to Beverly Hills to break 6 American speed records in January 1922. That same year the Motor Co. decided to shut down their factory racing program in December, and so Walker too decided it was time to hang up his jersey. He remained in California, working in the auto and machine industries before opening up his own fishing and outfitting company on the Sacramento River, where he lived out the remainder of his days with his wife. Harry Otto Walker died on December 18th, 1963, and was inducted into the AMA half of Fame in 1998; his personal scrapbook can be seen on display at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. This remarkable image captures the "camelback" himself, an elite pioneer motorcycle racer at the pinnacle of his professional career back on the boards in Beverly Hills, 1921.