As dawn broke on a new, modern age in America at the turn of the 20th century, the thrilling sport of motorcycle racing captivated the nation. The sport, much like the machines themsevles, debuted at a pace unlike anything seen before or since. Within the first 5 years of their arrival, motorcycles were being produced by multiple-dozens of companies, many with roots in a novelty of the previous era, the bicycle. Former cycling stars, the sporting icons of the day, began shifting their focus to the increasingly lucrative motorcycle racing game, and national press was swelling with articles about the new machines and the men who raced them. Naturally, the burgeoning motorcycle manufacturers looked to capture the attention of the public and the one guaranteed venue in which to do so was on the race track.
A new industry was born. Sanctioning bodies such as the Federation of American Motorcyclists, or FAM, regulated the rapidly evolving sport. What began with gentlemenly wagers at local horse tracks or sprints up the steepest road in town, scaled qucikly to national events, sponsored professionals, factory teams, and grudge mathces running at breakneck speeds around purpose-built venues. Jack Prince’s spectacular wooden stadiums, known as motordromes, were conceived and constructed nationwide amid the public’s increasing demend for more. Motorcycle companies quickly began adapting their road models to be competitive, or in some instances, developed factory works racers specifically for the new board track stadiums. It was in that moment that motorcycles changed, evolving into purebred racers capable of blistering levels of speed for the era. Among these early specials was perhaps the most coveted mythical racing motorcycles of all time… the Indian Big Base 8-Valve.
Motorcycling’s pioneers like Charles Gustafson at Reading-Standard, William Ottaway at Thor, and Joseph Merkel were keen to push the envelope, developing racers in an attempt to capture the attention that came with victory. Still, no one was farther forward in the lead than Indian’s Carl Oscar Hedstrom. A former cycling champion and savvy engineer, Hedstrom co-founded Indian motorcycles with fellow cycling trailblazer George Hendee in 1901 as an offshoot of their successful experiements with motor pacing machines for the cycle racing circuit. As a company, Indian was born on the track, and with the curious genius of Hedstrom in the workshop, the brand proved to be a force to reckon with as soon as it entered the motorcycle game.
Hedstrom consistenly drove Indian’s success through a series of racing prototypes while simultaneously hiring the best, most daring pioneer racers to kockey them, men like Fred Huyck, Paul Derkum, Charlie Balke, Ray Seymour, and Jacob DeRosier. By 1909, brands like Merkel, Thor, and Reading-Standard had established themselves as worthy rival brands, but it was always Indian they had to beat. In fact, many of the Springfield company’s innovative road models were derived from Hedstrom’s numerous prototype racing machines, the first of which dated back to 1903.
After modifying one of his first motorized tandem pacing machines, dubbed the Typhoon, to be a single seat land speed bike for the Carnival of Speed in Ormond Beach Florida in 1903, Hedstrom became among the first men in America to set land speed records. Proded along by his failure to keep up with fellow New England engineer and motor pioneer Glenn Curtiss and his Hercules V-twin the next year, Hedstrom developed Indian’s first V-twin later in 1904. What followed was the development of several one-off prototypes, experimenting with geometry, displacement, even reworking massive experimental French-made engines for machines like his unique Hot Shot depsite it being too large for sanctioned competition at the time.
So, as race promotoer Jack Prince began erecting his first board track motordromes, Hendee and Hedstrom made sure that it was their marquee that filled the headlines with win after win. Noting the opportunity at hand, George Hendee went so far as to secure a plot of land in Springfield, known as the orchard, for Prince to build his second board track motordrome and the first with a circular design in 1910 so that Indian could have the advatage of a testing facility near the factory. The saucer tracks demanded machines that were purebreds in nature, no frills or comforts, just unencumbered speed machines. Despite being unnecessisary weight, brakes and multispeed transmissions were also a novelty in production motorcycles at the time and such features were readily sacrificed on the first racing motorcycles. Suspension was also deemed a hinderance on the boards given that to goal of the rider was to run wide open on the banked wooden walls. Riding positions were lowered, bars cut short and tunred down, frames shortned and engines lowered. Some machines went so far as to do away with throttle linkages and ignition controls, opting instead for a kill switch installed on the bars. The riders would get a bump start and run wide open around the tracks before killing the ignition and coasting back around to the pits, and they would do so in little more than wool sweaters and leather caps for protection. To be a board track racer, was to be among the toughest men on Earth.
It was in May 1911 that one of Hedstrom's most celebrated and successful racing prototypes made its debut. Indian’s "valve-in-head" special, commonly known now as the 8-Valve, was first tested not on the boards of a motordrome but on the dirt tracks of the Northeastern circuit.
On May 5 at the Benning’s dirt track just outside Washington DC, newcomer Frank Hart made his debut with Indian onboard Oscar Hedstrom’s latest design. Know as the Wall Street Comet, Hart was a stockbroker by day, racing in amatuer events for the Reading-Standard company on the weekends. His skill in the saddle drew the attention of Hedstrom, who was head-hunting new talent for his East Coast stable of riders and tapped the young rider to test out his latest experimental racer at the low-stakes event at Bennings.
The new 6HP, overhead valve Indian, dubbed “No. 26” featured two exhaust, and two intake valves per cylinder, each pair being actuated by a rocker arm and positioned over the combustion chamber of the cylinders. The concept of overhead valves traces its roots to experiments as early as 1898 in internal combustion engines, but it wasn’t until Buick unveiled its Model B in 1904 did the configuration prove commercially viable. Overseas, engineers in France, Germany, and England also began tinkering with overhead-valve configurations, but the platform remained largerly exclusive in automobiles. Hedstrom’s new 8-Valve would break the mold by bringing the valve arrangement to motorcycles in America, but he wasn’t the first to have the thought. Former Harley-Davidson engineer Perry E. Mack was the first to unveil an overhead-valve motorcycle engine during his time working at the Waverly Manufacturing Company, which was sold as an engine only and later as a complete motorcycle reorganized into the Jefferson marque. Mack’s overhead-valve V-twin was released in 1910, one year before Hedstrom’s design debuted, but Jefferson lacked the resources to produce the machine at scale. However, like Buick, Hedstrom had all of the manufacturing might and deep pockets of Indian to invest in the overhead-valve platform.
Using his proven F-head factory racing motorcycle as a base, Hedstrom’s first 8-valve prototype, designated “Number 26,” encorporated his new top-end design with only minor tweeks to the rest of the bike. An elongated oil tank positioned on the seat tubefeatured a right side cutaway for the rear cylinder exhaust to route through was a slight modification. Another was the ported cylinders featuring a series of small machined holes underneath the lower fin to aid in airflow and boost power. The bottom end was of the standard production size, and a primary drive was fitted. Hedstrom kept the factory racing chasis largely unchanged as a short coupled, rigid, loopframe design with a standard fuel tank and leaf spring fork.
So, for the low stakes races at the Bennings track, Frank Hart, made his Indian debut along with the new No. 26 machine on May 5th, 1911, putting on a tremendous show and winning the 5 and 10 mile amatuer races. The following week Hedstrom invited more of the brass at Indian, as well as several of the team’s west coast talent to check out the new machine and his newest rider. Again, Hart and his lucky number 26 8-valve proved to be the ones to beat, only losing heats when the powerful new machine threw a tire. Over the coming weeks, Hart and another new Indian rider named Fred Mercier tested and tuned the experimental 8-valve in regional events while Indian’s old gaurd, like Charlie Balke and John Constant dominated on their proven F-head machines. Surpirisingly, Indian’s star rider Jacob DeRosier wasn’t racing during this pivitol moment in the company’s history as he prepared for his historic trip to the Isle of Man.
A few weeks after their debut, Hart and the 8-valve took the 10 mile open at the big races in Guttenberg, New Jersey on May 21. Indian’s start rider Charlie Balke won the 5-mile professional event, and the two men split the honors of the half-hour mixed event, with Hart taking the amatuer title and Balke the professional. Hart then boarded a train to Chicago to run at the F.A.M.’s national championship races held at the Hawthorne dirt track, where, again Frank Hart and his trusty Indian 8-Valve were only ever beaten by bad luck with tires and won the 5-mile amateur national title.
Hart established himself as a quickly rising star on the national circuit and with the 8-valve, Hedstrom had demonstrated yet again that if you wanted to wim in professional motorcycle racing in America you had to get past him first. Hedstrom’s 8-valve had made a new high mark, but a new contender, Excelsior, soon emerged on the boards in Chicago that would send Oscar Hedstrom back to the drawing board once again.
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Created in-part with the expertise of Excelsior’s star rider “Farmer” Joe Wolters, a powerful new racing motorcycle susinctly designated the 7 and built especially for the increasingly popular board track motordromes quickly proved a threat to the perennially dominant Indian at the races.
A seasoned racing pioneer of the Denver circuit, Wolters first acquired an Excelsior mount in 1910 from the local Denver dealer, and when he discovered that the belt on his ported Excelsior single would slip once it became oily, he set about converting it to a chain drive, as such introducing the first chain-driven Excelsior, squeezing 10 mph more out of the machine. Still, it was in 1911 once bicycle magnate Ignaz Schwinn acquired the Excelsior marque that a factory racing program was given the support and resources it needed to challange Indian on the track, and Wolters was recruited to spearhead the campaign. He went to work in Chicago with Excelsior’s engineers to produced a thuroughbred racer, and with the “7” Wolters and Excelsior would alter the course of American motorcycle racing history. The 61ci V-twin competition special produced 7 horsepower, with its lightened and ported cyclinders giving it its nickname was combined with a short-coupled racing frame, an extended and braced steering head, dropped handlebars, rigid fork, and Hertz magneto. Wolters debuted the new machine on August 5, 1911, and quickly established that he would be the man to beat at the newly constructed 1/3 mile motordrome at Riverview, Jack Prince’s 8th such track. By the end of the month Wolters had set new records from 1 to 10 miles, hitting speeds of 87 mph onboard his new “7” and knocking iconic names like Balke, Chapplle, Mitchel, and Graves off of the record sheets. On August 26th, Wotlers trimmed 1/5 of a second off of the mighty Jake DeRosier’s 1 mile record which he had just set at the Brooklands track in England while in the UK for the Isle of Mann a few months prior. DeRosier, having only recently returned was in Chicago to witness the carnage, looking on as the slight man they called “Farmer Joe” blast past his hard fought records at 90 mph, all while on a machine without his beloved Indian script across the tank.
With Wolters in the saddle, the Excelsior 7 racked up victories, stealing record after record from Indian with its prowess on the timbers of America's motordromes. Hedstrom took note and returned to his machine shop determined to return with a contender using his 8-Valve platform as a base. It was in only back in May 1911 that Hedstrom unveiled his first 8-Valve, but by that November, a new breed of 8-Valve, specifically engineered to lay waste to any who challenge debuted at the new saucer in Oakland, CA.
Hedstrom's new 8-Valve design distilled a board track racing machine to its essence; raw and uncompromising speed. Taking cues from the success of the Excelsior’s design while incorporating the strengths from his earlier 8-Valve, the new machine’s rigid frame was made slightly taller and longer, the engine loop was set lower and the steering tube elongated and raked slight forward. The fuel tank was redesigned to fit the new chassis, giving the new 8-Valve its distinctive, elongated line at the neck, sharply sloping in the rear to keep the riding position as low as possible. The oil tank was notched on the right side to accommodate the short exhaust from the rear cylinder and aid in warming the oil. The traditional jackshaft assembly was deleted altogether as the machine was now a direct drive off the crank with rigid footpegs attached, given its lack of pedals.
Again inspired by the Excelsior, Hedstrom increased the size of the flywheels and cases, which were reinforced given their larger size with distinctive cast webbing. Being purpose-built for the motordrome, the Big Base had no brakes, transmission, clutch, suspension, or throttle; power regulation is left to a metal tab on the handlebars, which would break the electrical circuit from the magneto. The cylinders heads were ported, and each head had two intake and two exhaust valves actuated in pairs by a rocker arm so gasses could more efficiently move in and out of the chamber. As often was the case with Hedstrom’s designs the machine's simplicity was elegant, raw, and efficient, and its power would soon redefine the idea of speed. With its distinct augmentations, Hedstrom’s new racer board track racer has come to be known as the Big Base 8-Valve, a legendary machine which today remains among the most coveted motorcycles in history.
However, not all was well in the Indian camp and despite Oscar Hedstrom having just developed such legendary racing machine, the company’s two best riders were no longer a part of the factory team.
The story goes that, after witnessing the prowess of Joe Wolters and the Excelsior 7, Indian’s star rider Jacob DeRosier wrote a biting letter to Hendee and Hedstrom as his F-head No. 21 machine and the number 23 machine of his teammate Charlie Balke, were simply not up to the task of keeping pace with Excelsior. Perhaps a bit sour from his lack-luster perfomance at the Isle of man TT and unsatisfied with the level of Balke’s performance against Wolters in Chicago, DeRosier wrote to Hedstrom “either build new machines or wipe that word speed off your advertisements,” signing the wire with both his and Balke’s name. With DeRosier’s infamous salty temperment surely a factor, he received notice back from Springfield that “your services are severed for all time.” Balke received a similar letter stating “As we have no machines at the present time fast enough for you to win on, we will have to lay you off until we build faster machines. in the meantime you will have to do the best you can, your paychecks will continue for two weeks,” Oscar Hedstrom.
The move came as a shock to DeRosier as he had begun his relationship with Indian almost as soon as the company had been formed back in 1901, and as such had become America’s first racing star with the brand. Possibly even more shocked, however, was Charlie Balke, who it has been reported had no knowledge of his inclusion in DeRosier’s letter to Springfield and now was without a mount as a result. Never the less, Excelsior, now under the ownership of the ambitous Ignaz Schwinn, was poised to expand their racing program given the runaway success of Wolters and the new “7.” Excelsior immediately offered a contract to both men, providing them with their own competition special 7’s to finish out the 1911 season with.
Ironically, the demands DeRosier had made in his snappy letter to Hendee and Hedstrom were features found throughout the new Big Base in development at the same time, but with Charlie Balke and Jake DeRosier gone, Hedstrom tapped veteran racer Ray Seymour to unveil the new Big Base 8-Valve at the Elmhurst Motordrome as soon as it was ready. On November 19, 1911, Seymour unleashed the new Big Base on the boards in Oakland, quickly demonstrating its potential by taking the lead at nearly 90 MPH. However, in typical fashion given the dreadful state of tire technology at the time, Seymour's rear tire blew apart at speed. The seasoned rider maintained control, but as he descended the track, another rider, Theo Samuelson, slammed into the limping racer, sending them both violently tumbling at speed across the splinter field.
It wasn’t the debut any within the Indian camp had hoped, but after a short recovery, a bruised and battered Seymour returned with his repaired Big Base two weeks later, ready to let loose once again on the banked boards in Elmhurst. He promptly set a new track record at 88.5 MPH before facing off against Wolters with enough power to best the current champion. Still, Wolters was a highly skilled competitor, and the two battled elbow to elbow during the first 10-mile race. Seymour continued testing his new mount with a few hiccups along the way at Elmhurst, mostly stuck valves and blown tires, but Hedstrom’s new purebred had answered the threat posed by Wolters and the Excelsior, and the coming season would be one of the most thrilling in the sport.
Though word was spreading through the ranks of the west coast racing circuit, the first press on Indian's Big Base 8-Valve only began as a trickle out that December, with blubs describing it as the "direct drive" special. On December 30, another article was published announcing that the talented young professional Eddie Hasha, known as the Texas Cyclone had been recruited by Oscar Hedstrom to the Indian camp and had just taken delivery of his own Big Base 8-Valve in San Francisco to join up with Seymour. On January 6, 1912, an article in Bicycling World & Motorcycle Review introduced enthusiasts to Hedstrom's latest factory racer with images and a detailed description of its refinements over Hedstrom’s first “valve in head” machines.
The pair continued racing, testing, and tuning their 2 Big Base beasts until February 1912, then Hasha and Seymour uncrated them in Los Angeles for the opening of Jack Prince's latest motordrome, the steep, 50-degree banked boards of the L.A. Stadium. On February 12, 1912, Hasha, who was making his debut in Los Angeles, leveled the field of Class A competitors onboard his new Big Base 8-Valve labeled No. 32 in front of an opening crowd of 8,000. Hasha not only won each event in distances of 2, 3, and 4 miles, beating out Excelsior's powerhouse team of Wolters, DeRosier, and Balke, but in each distance he ran, he reclaimed the standing record by wide margins. Within two weeks, Hasha and Seymour had ammassed all of records only recently lost to Excelsior with their pair of Big Base machines. Then, on April 7, at the big wooden mile at Playa Del Rey, Hasha smashed the record marks from 1 to 10 miles, hitting a new top speed of 95 mph and further cemeting himself, and the Indian Big Base 8-Valve as an unbeatable pair.
Seymour and Hasha continued on their war path in the early 1912 season onboard the only two Big Base 8-Valves to have rolled out of Springfield at that point. Ray Seymour again upped the top mark at playa in May by setting a new record speed of 97.83 MPH on his Big Base, affectionately nicknamed Big Buck. Then, in July, the world's best motorcycle racers descended on Columbus, Ohio, for the opening races at the country's latest motordrome. Race promoter and track builder Jack Prince upped the scale of the new track, increasing its length to 1/2 mile with a continuous banking of 48 degrees. The opening events were scheduled as the first F.A.M. National Championship races, drawing in the biggest names in the country and the absolute best the manufacturers had to offer. However, due to conflicts between management at Excelsior and officials in the F.A.M., the Chicago-based marque refused to participate in the races in Columbus, leaving the door wide open for Indian to sweep the titles. Oscar Hedstrom arrived in force with second pair of Big Base machines to compete alongside Seymour and Hasha. Morty Graves, another seasoned pioneer racer from the early days at L.A.'s Agriculture Park, was tapped to jockey one of the new Big Bases, the other being staged in the pits as a reserve.
Despite having been fired with DeRosier the prior season, Charlie Balke remained one of the best riders in the sport as the star rider at Excelsior and arrived eager to talk his way into a ride on the new Big Base. After a bit of coaxing, Hedstrom decided to grant Balke’s wish, giving his old champion a chance to run in the time trial event onboard the reserve Big Base. Without a single practice lap on the new machine, Charlie “Fearless” Balke shot around the 1/2-mile saucer coming within a fraction of a second of Eddie Hasha, hitting a top speed of 94 MPH, and securing his old spot on the Springfield factory team once again. Indian's Johnny U. Constant took the National Amateur title onboard a modified production F-head, while Ray Seymour decimated the competition winning every race and becoming America's first National Champion onboard his Big Base.
The machine was undeniable, having in a few short months landed Indian claim to every standing record at any distance or speed, including the nation titles for both professional and amateur classes. The Big Base was was Hedstrom’s swan song at Indian, a fiery purebred birthed at the peak of the motordrome craze in America which put Indian back on top. Still, just as soon as the Big Base 8-Valve, the quintessential board track racing machine arrived on the timber saucers, the sport itself was already in jeopardy. In just the first half of 1912 alone, ten riders died racing in motordromes across the country. Even America's first motorcycling racing star, Jake DeRosier, was in dire straights following his collision racing with Balke in March at the L.A. Stadium in which he sustained serious injuries that would ultimately lead to his death in 1913. Public interest was already in a state of decline given the rising death toll, when, in September, the tragedy that unfolded at the Vailsburg Motordrome would rattle the country to its core. While racing his Big Base at 92 mph, Eddie Hasha lost control sending the young star and his machine coreining into the stands. Hasha was killed instantly along with 6 spectators, the youngest being a 14 year old boy. Hasha’s mangled Big Base then fell back to the track colliding with his teammate Johnny Albright, who was violently thrown from his mount, adding one more to the death toll that day. It was the gruesome accident at Vailsburg that sent shock waves through the country, producing the now infamous Murderdrome moniker and marked the beginning of the end of the perilous sport.
In the afternath, Hasha’s mighty Big Base left in a twisted pile, as was Albright’s F-head racer. Devistated, Hedstrom recalled his fleet of Big Base 8-Valves to the factory in Springfield. Reigning National Champion Ray Seymour, who had previously refused to marry given the inherent risks of motorcycle racing, promtply resigned, along with several other veteran riders who walked away from racing altogether. Charlie Balke all but quit as well, stepping away for month’s before returning to win the inaugural Eglin road race in July of the following year. 1913 would mark the beginning of the industry transitioning away from the sensational motordromes that had been so popular, as manufacturers, racers, and the F.A.M. began favoring flat tracks and the emerging European Grand Prix style racing. For Indian's Big Base 8-Valve, the trauma of Hasha’s crash, along with the evolving preference in racing venues marked the end for the iconic machine, for what is the greatest board track racing motorcycle ever produced without a board track on which to race it? There would be only a few occassions that one of Hedstrom’s unbridled big Base 8-Valves made appearance after 1912 with riders like Morty Graves and harry Glenn jokying one in Jack Prince’s southern “Dixie Circuit” at the twighlight of the motordrome era in 1913 and 14, but then they all but vanished. However, Hedstrom’s initial 8-valve design, like the more tame prototype ridden by Frank Hart and Fred Mercer in the Spring of 1911 struck the right balance between capability and control. Indian’s standard 8-valve became a staple factory competition platform for the brand throughout the teens and into the 1920s in grand prix, speedway, and dirt track races, answered only by the emerging Harley-Davidson factory program under the direction of William Ottaway following World War I.
Yet, despite its short lifespan and uncompromising nature, the Big Base remains one of the most coveted motorcycles ever manufactured. Much like the fabled board track motordromes on which they raced, just as quickly as the Big Base 8-Valve arrived, Indian’s legnedary pure bred, the motorcycle which regained the Springfield brand it position at the top of the sport, the culmination of Oscar Hedstrom’s dedication to building the fastest two-wheeled machines, they went missing. After a century of curious study and decades of hunting, enthusiasts have been able to uncover a couple examples of the elusive Big Base, or piece them together, or remake the iconic board track racer from the little that remained. Indian’s Big Base 8-valve was the very concept of speed, raw and uncompromising, distilled by one of the most talented engineering pioneers specifically for the task at being unbeatable yet refined in its simplicity as only Oscar Hedstrom could accomplish. And for that, the Big Base remains a legendary machine, equal parts brutality and elegance, the embodiment of the thrilling age of the board track motordrome, … and in a word, a purebred.