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 which being but teenaged boys. In the weeks that followed the Valisburg track shutdown, papers nationwide ran stories of the carnage, and an outcry for improved safety standards had organizers and promoters implementing 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 so most were eager to get back onto the boards.
Three years ago I began a project involving one of the most historically significant collections of photographs from the Golden Age of American motorcycle racing. It has been an incredible journey full of discovery and I am excited to finally be sharing this remarkable collection, as well as the story of the man behind their preservation, Mr. Ashely Franklin Van Order.
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It was his distinctive posture, the way his long back arched high above his shoulders when he tucked in tight on top of his Harley-Davidson that earned him the nickname “Camelback.” Harry Otto Walker was and will always be one of America’s most popular and recognizable pioneer motorcycle racers, and photographs like this one perfectly illustrate why. Walker was one of the first racers to be handpicked by Harley-Davidson’s Bill Ottaway in 1914 when 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 11, 1915, and it would be Walker who was most consistently marking up podium finishes and broken records for the company over the following months and years. Between 1915 and 1918 the California native racked up over a dozen first place finishes and even more speed records across the country, including a huge first place at the Dodge City 300-Mile race in July, 1915.
Scale. When we look back and try to imagine what it must have been like sit atop one of America’s infamous board track motordromes it is often the scale of the venue which eludes us. We have little to nothing like them today, and at the height of their popularity in the early teens, there were little else like them in the world. Another aspect of the motordrome which tends to trip up our daydreams is the variety in board track design, which produced a general congealing of all wooden racing tracks under the single name of motordrome over time. From the the first circular motordromes to the massive oval speedways, and even the small portable wall rider thrill shows have all, overtime, been referred to as motordromes. The truth is, that when most folks imagine board track racing we tend to clump together a version of all three types of venues.
