Message from author:
I am working on a book about Leslie "Red" Parkhurst, the first factory racer for Harley-Davidson motorcycles, circa 1914 through 1922. Anyone who knew Red, especially in the period after he left motorcycle and (briefly) automobile racing, from 1925 until his passing in 1972, please contact me by telephone or e-mail: (206) 525-7024 and tparkhurst@hotmail.com

My physical address, for USPS mailing - some people have no computers and may prefer to write a letter - is: 550 N.E. Ravenna Boulevard, apt. 3 Seattle Washingon 98115-6436.



Tenative First Chapter
An old dog never forgets tricks learned while young

Dave Tatom can still recall vividly recall the man who befriended him when he was just a young guy racing midget racecars.

“He sounded like a gangster,” recalls Dave Tatom of the Valvoline sales rep, who used to call on the auto repair shop in Tacoma, Washington, where Tatom worked as a young man in the early 1950s. “But then, he got that way when a board, from one of those tracks he’d raced on, came loose and punctured his throat.”

The salesman was Leslie Parkhurst, but everyone knew him as simply “Red,” due to the natural color of his hair.

Parkhurst seemed to waddle everywhere he went the result of some injuries sustained while racing that he was lucky enough to survive. He wore a big diamond ring on one finger, engraved with the winning results of one of those many races he’d won. He was a commanding figure, especially so to a young man looking to make his mark in the world of motorsports.

“I visited his house once,” said Tatom. “One room had trophies from the floor to the ceiling."

Tatom himself was racing midget racecars when he first met Red Parkhurst in 1953.

“Red got us Valvoline to run in the car,” adds Tatom. “I got ‘Rookie of the Year,’ shortly after he started helping us and got a $50 prize. Red was instrumental in that.”

Bobby Harris was a friend of Tatom’s who raced for a motorcycle shop in nearby Puyallup. The shop, owned by Vern Pough, basically all British machinery --- BSA, AwasVS, Triumph and Matchless. These machines from across the Atlantic, with their big overhead valve, single and twin cylinder engines had begun to challenge Harley-Davidson, soon to be the last American motorcycle manufacturer.

Harris rode a Matchless on the smooth flat tracks that had proliferated in Post-World War II America, replacing the banked tracks, fitted with wooden boards, that Red Parkhurst had raced on shortly after the turn of the 20th Century. Speed had always been an intoxicant to young American males and flat tracks were meant for maximum acceleration.

Harris had entered a race scheduled at the Silverdale Race Track in Kitsap County, Washington, just west of a body of water known as the Puget Sound. Tatom asked his patron if he’d liked to come watch his buddy race.

“These guys don’t know how to ride anymore,” replied Parkhurst. “They drag their feet on the ground.”

Indeed the new breed of racers did, in an effort to anchor the new breed of high-powered, light and agile English racers. Despite Parkhurst’s misgivings, Tatom persuaded the old veteran to attend the upcoming race.

Bobby Harris set a track record on his Matchless the day that Tatom and Parkhurst came out to watch. But Parkhurst couldn’t resist one bit of advice.

“Hey kid, I don’t know who taught you to race; but if you get your feet off the ground, you’ll go faster,” said Parkhurst.

That led Harris to make Parkhurst an offer: if he felt he could do better, take the Matchless out onto the track and show the younger rider.

“Pretty soon, Red was asking for a helmet,” recalls Tatom. “Somebody got him a helmet and I remember thinking, ‘This is not going well.’ “

One might have easily written off the older motorcyclist as a charming anachronism. Indeed he was dressed in his usual best which harkened back to another era. It consisted of a tweed jacket with a split tail and what Americans might have called “an English beanie,” more properly known as a steeplechase hat. Proper English gentlemen wore such hats when riding a horse, or driving one of the earliest examples of machinery from the likes of Morris Garage.

Parkhurst got on the motorcycle and did a couple of laps around the track at an easy pace. Then he put up one hand to indicate he was going to go faster. He went flat out for two laps and came on in – after besting the lap speed set by Bobby Harris.

Tatom, himself now in his late sixties can look back on a life filled with racing -- sports cars to Bonneville streamliners. Renowned for building all manner of vintage automobile engines, he can still remember how Red Parkhurst taught school.

“Hey, Red was a guy who had taken a motorcycle with a sidecar over 100 miles-per-hour, by himself, in 1922,” offers Tatom. Obviously, the one-time member of the Harley-Davidson "Wrecking Crew” kept his edge longer than most.


Leslie Eaton – later to be known as “Red” – Parkhurst was born on May 18, 1896 in Rapid City, South Dakota. His family later moved to Denver, Colorado in the early 1900s. The method of transportation was reportedly a covered wagon.

Red Parkhurst’s father was a railroad man and would later own a small brewery. While his parents had named him “Leslie,” by the time he was old enough to go to school, boys called him “Redhead.” His parents, teachers and the school principal strove to retain the dignified name given him at birth; but to no avail.

Like many children at the turn of the 20th Century, Red started work as a child, and one of his first jobs was working for a painting company in Denver, doing whatever was needed.

He was eventually given the job of driving the company truck, filled with supplies for painting, to job sites. However, his desire to test the speed limits of the truck, led to his being let go.

Parkhurst became a legend in American motorsports, in American sports generally. And like all legends, there are stories told that seem to be apocryphal.

One story goes that Red was delivering newspapers on a unicycle in Denver when William “Bill”: Harley was in town on a business trip. Harley saw Parkhurst on the unicycle. He was said to be so amazed at the youngster’s skill with the device, that Harley took him down to the local horse track; there, he had Parkhurst put on a horse and he took to riding a horse like the proverbial duck to water.

Then, according to this story, Bill Harley arranged passage for the struggling boy back to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Harley-Davidson motorcycles was located and put him on one of the company’s motorcycles. There’s no corroboration for this story, told by one of the sons from Parkhurst’s last marriage – he had four. But given what seem to be the facts, one might be forgiven for believing it.

In an account of his early years, published under his name in the November 1936 issue of The Motorcyclist by Red Parkhurst, says the following:

“My career started in 1909, in the old Tuilleries (Motordrome board track) in Denver. From there until 1911, there were a lot of hard knocks. For a living I worked for the Mead Auto Cycle Company, which firm distributed Excelsior in the Denver territory. At every opportunity, I was out racing.

“By 1912, I had managed to gain enough of that stuff called ‘experience’ so that every once in a while I found myself out front. At about that time, among professionals, there were a number of fellows racing under the names of: Arthur Mitchell, Charlie Balke, Eddie Hasha, Red Armstrong and Joe Wolter, etc. And if you know your motorcycle racing history, they were also out in front quite a bit. Thus when I turned pro, I learned more about that thing called motorcycle racing.”

How did someone just 13 years old get involved in a sport as dangerous as motorcycle racing in 1909? He lied about his age. The race promoters didn’t care, since the youngster seemed talented enough to handle the challenge.

By 1912, Parkhurst had drifted to Dallas, Texas and was on hand for the opening of the Dallas Motordrome. His peers had by now shortened his nickname to simply “Red”.

The Dallas Motordrome was one of the magnificent new board tracks that had originated with the musings of a racing entrepreneur named Arthur Pillsbury. While board racetracks had been around since 1910, the earliest of these ovals weren’t suited for the earliest motorcycles. Averaging speeds as high as 80 miles-per-hour, these rudimentary machines, not that differentiated from bicycles, had instability problems even on flat straight-aways. The earliest ovals had no smooth transition from turn-to-turn.

Pillsbury, while no engineer, had studied railroads and knew of railroad design. Railroad designers had developed a technique called the Searless Spiral Easement Curve. It allowed top-heavy steam locomotives to pull several dozen freight cars up or down a hill without toppling over. This was achieved by feathering a series of corners, one into the next, to blend the approach to any curve.

Pillsbury built a mile-and-a-quarter long board track, using this same technique, in Beverly Hills, California; it was designed exclusively for motorcycle racing. Today, the Beverly Hilton Hotel stands where Pillsbury’s track was.

Other promoters and builders from across the country came to see Pillsbury’s marvel. They left believers in the concept he expropriated from the railroads. East Coast racing promoter Jack Prince, who was himself also a motorcycle racer, built board tracks all over America, between 1910 and 1925, as spectator interest grew.

Part of the attraction was the tracks themselves. The banking, all in 2 by 4s or 1 by 2s, laid on end, ranged from only 15 degrees up to a almost vertical 62-degree wall. Some tracks, such as that in St Louis, were referred to as “pie tins” because the banking was so steep and the transition from the flat surfaces to the banking was so abrupt.

In 1913, Parkhurst went to Milwaukee with several riders from the Denver Motordrome. 18,000 people turned out to watch. Opportunity was his, as he was the first rider out on the then new four-lap motordrome. Parkhurst won the final event -- five miles in 3:32 minutes – and was first in a free-for-all, six-mile race. He completed the six-mile race in 4.435 minutes.

When the Milwaukee season ended, he and Glen Stokes went to St. Louis, Missouri to finish the season in that state.

When the 1914 season started, Parkhurst went back to the Milwaukee Motordrome again. History was ready to be made.

Harley-Davidson, a company founded by Bill Harley and the Davidson family, had motorcycle sales of just 1,100 motorcycles produced by about 100 employees in 1909; but by the end of 1913, Harley-Davidson had sold 71,000 motorcycles that year.

While Bill Harley worked to develop new transmissions, his newly hired assistant Bill Ottaway began studying ways to lessen vibration by more careful balancing of flywheels and the crank pin.

Harley-Davidson wanted to pursue racing more actively, as a way of gaining even more sales. Ottaway modified a 61-cubic inch pocket valve engine, fitting it with a special camshaft and modified valve porting. He installed this engine in a 51-inch wheelbase motorcycle of 300 pounds. It was designated the Model II-K, a limited production machine meant to be sold to privateers, customers willing to race it on their own.

Ottaway asked Parkhurst is he’d take the Model II-K around the track. Ottaway was so impressed he asked Parkhurst if he’d be a member of Harley-Davidson’s motorcycle team, on the spot – said “team” had yet to have any other members. Parkhurst agreed and became the very first member of Harley’s race team.

With Parkhurst riding, Harley-Davidson continued testing their new racer in low-key regional races, in places such as Wisconsin and Minnesota. Parkhurst won most of these events against riders who were not nationally recognized. Ottaway and his new recruit entered races such as the prestigious Dodge City 300 and the 300-miles race in Savannah, Georgia, in order to access the Model II-K in more serious competition. They didn’t win either race; but they did take a respectable third place finish in Georgia.

By September of 1914, things came together in a big way. The scene was the Minnesota State Fair ground. A crowd estimated, between 125,000 to175, 000 people, turned out on September 12 to watch a dirt track that turned into a mud bowl; it rained during the first few days of the fair and added to conditions that had to be overcome.

Parkhurst was one of 17 entrants in a three-mile race for “stripped stock machines,” as race promoters called the motorcycles. Only 14 motorcycles started the race and Parkhurst’s was one of them. The man shoving him off at the start did a poor job and Parkhurst started out an eighth of a mile back from the field. Nonetheless, he went on to win the race.

The following year would allow Parkhurst an even greater opportunity to show his will – and his skill – at winning.