Introduction -- from a covered wagon to Daytona Beach speed king

It was an exciting time in American history when anything seemed possible. Machines took control of the air and allowed man to achieve the age-old dream of flight. And on the earth itself, men and women too, were able to go distances that their forebears had taken months to cover, in the relative shorter span of a few days or hours. Men became heroes because they could control wheeled machines and make them do whatever they wished – or so it seemed until the odds caught up with them. Names like Oldfield, Chevrolet and Dusenberg came to hold sway over the imaginations of the car buying public. And one man, who as a toddler had come west in a coveredwagon from South Dakota and was the fastest man in America 10years later, literally stood above the rest: “Red” Parkhurst.

At 6 feet four inches, Leslie “Red” Parkhurst was a lanky youth who won his first motorcycle race at the tender age of 13. His nickname derived from his thick mane of hair. He seemed unafraid of the possible consequences to motorcycle racing and was suited to the times, in the same way that Theodore Roosevelt was to the White House of that age.

It was the beginning of a new century and anything seemed possible.

“Red” Parkhurst enthused optimism and was noted for always seeming to smile, in stark contrast to the intense glares and almost autistic focus of other racers. He gained the praise of other riders such as “Cannonball” Baker for his skill and his modesty in the face of accomplishments they wish they’d achieved.

Red Parkhurst’s gift lay not in his ability to engineer or design machines, but rather in his ability to work with them to achieve what seemed unable to be achieved by lesser men. He could work with a motorcycle in the way that men in the previous century could work with a horse to cover distances in as short a time as possible.

On April 20, 1915, at a track in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Red Parkhurst rode a motorcycle 150 miles for two-and-a-half hours. For the last 50 miles of that race, he held the fuel tank of his Harley-Davidson in place with his knees, achieving 83 miles-per-hour. This was at a time when the fastest Indy racecars were lucky to hit 66 miles-per-hour.

The year before, 1914, Bill Ottaway, the racing manager for Harley-Davidson, had asked Red to join the company’s new racing team. Red eagerly accepted, moved to Milwaukee and became the first member of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle team.

In 1915, Red and teammate Otto Walker led an assault on the big national events that would earn them the nickname, “The Wrecking Team.” They established Harley-Davidson amongst Indian and Excelsior-Henderson in racing; and as much as anything, are why today we still have Harley-Davidson motorcycles, while those other famed motorcycle marques are history.

Red Parkhust became a sports celebrity at a time when America needed a new type of hero, a man who could tame machines. At a time when many working men and women wondered what mass production had done to their lives, Red Parkhurst demonstrated that it was still the human being who was in charge of the machine – not the other way around. One of Red’s biggest fans and closest friends was Jack Dempsey, then the world’s heavyweight boxing champion.

In February, 1920, on the sands of Daytona Beach, Florida, Red Parkhurst “all the world’s motorcycle speed records were smashed to atoms” by Red and fellow motorcycle rider Fred Ludlow, according to a newspaper account of the day. With Ludlow riding in a sidecar, Red broke not only 8 solo riding records but also 8 sidecar-equipped motorcycle records. Ludlow set one record by himself.

Red achieved a speed just shy of 112 miles-per-hour (111.11 mph), with a 68 cubic-inch engine Harley-Davidson twin, the fastest anyone had ever gone on a motorcycle.

In 1921, when Walter Davidson eliminated Harley-Davidson’s racing activities at the end of that year’s racing season, Red Parkhurst took a job offer from Excelsior; he not only became a Midwest sales representative for that company, but also raced for them. However, he had a miserable season with Excelsior and returned to Harleys in 1922.

Red had acquired a family by this time, and he raced only part-time. He continued to race on-and-off through 1924. He earned a couple of podium finishes on his adopted hometrack, the Milwaukee Mile, where he had first come to the attention of Bill Ottaway. Those finishes were at M&ATA and AMA Nationals in 1923 and 1924.

Major motorcycle racing began to fade out in 1925. Prohibitive upkeep costs and traveling expenses wrote a finish to the early golden years of the sport. During that time, Red Parkhurst had earned about $91,000 along with trophy cups and medals, by the dozen.

So, he retired from racing and went onto work in sales for companies such as Firestone and Valvoline. But he never lost his love for motorcycles as some young men at a track in Silverdale, Washington found out in the 1950s.