Artley, Roy
Name/Title
Artley, RoyTags
Road Racing, Specialty CompetitionDescription
- Won the grueling Springerville-to-Phoenix desert race in 1916 - Set new San Francisco-to-Los Angeles record in 1916 - Broke the prestigious “Three-Flag” record (Canada to Mexico) in 1917 Roy Artley was a pioneering endurance motorcycle racer during the 1910s and ‘20s. He is best remembered for his many city-to-city record runs, primarily in his home state of California during the late 1910s. Artley’s biggest national victory came in 1916 when he won the Springerville-to-Phoenix race in Arizona, riding for the factory Indian team. Artley learned his motorcycle riding skills as a delivery rider, delivering, of all things, fine china! He carried the china in a sack draped over his shoulder. In an article for The Motorcyclist in 1935, he described how he perfected broad-sliding his Thor on nearly every dirt road of San Diego. Perhaps predictably, the young Artley slid himself right out of the china delivery business, but he quickly picked up a job delivering mail. He later said that the Postal Service wasn’t nearly as concerned with his wild riding as the china company was. In 1912, Artley entered his first local competition on his Thor, an enduro sponsored by the San Diego Motorcycle Club, finishing in the top three. Unfortunately, the club was running short on funds, and he never received the medal he’d earned in his very first race. Artley’s first national race came in 1913 when he entered his Thor in the then-famous San Diego-to-Phoenix road race and finished fifth. Even though it was called a road race, it was really a wide-open desert race. The “roads” were nothing more than old sandy trails left over from the covered wagon days. The West was still very wild during that era. In addition to the risks normally associated with motorcycle racing, racers also had to watch out for the occasional band of cattle thieves roaming the border country. A racer also ran a very real risk of dying from dehydration or heat stroke in the desert heat should he suffer a breakdown. Artley became one of the top racers of these desert city-to-city events. Hired by Indian in 1916, he competed in the most famous races of the day, including nationals held on the Ascot Park circuit, the Marion, Ind., road races and Dodge City, Kan., 300-Mile dirt track event. While he earned several top-10 finishes in those classic races, his biggest victory came in the Springerville-to-Phoenix race, which replaced the old San Diego-to-Phoenix event in 1916. In a 1935 interview, Artley recalled that even though he was a factory Indian rider, he and the other riders had no team support on these long and grueling events. He pre-rode the Springerville-to-Phoenix route in reverse a few days before the start of the race and pre-paid for gasoline and oil in small towns along the route. During the race, he arrived early at one of his stops and discovered the gas station owner was relaxing away from the hot desert sun in his house and had left the gas pump locked. Artley finally got the slow-moving attendant to come out and fill his gas tank, only to find that the oil he had already purchased was locked up in a shed behind the house. Not wanting to lose any more precious time than he already had, Artley roared off without the oil. He ran out of oil just a mile away from the overnight checkpoint town of Flagstaff, Ariz. Later in the race, an inattentive gas station attendant accidentally put water in the Indian’s gas tank. Artley discovered this fact miles down the road and luckily was close to another small town when the bike came to a stop. Artley recalled the moment he discovered what had happened. “Taking the carburetor apart, I found it full of water. The fellow had poured two buckets all right, but the second one had been a bucket of drinking water for the fellows. I remember standing in the middle of nowhere in dead silence, providing the profanity streaming from my lips wasn’t considered noise.” Artley recovered from that difficulty and won the race over archrival and Indian teammate Alan Bedell, who was a native of Arizona and knew the route much better than Artley did. From 1916 to 1919, Artley set a slew of city-to-city records for Henderson Motorcycles. In 1916, he set a new mark from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a time of 10 hours, 39 minutes, bettering the old record by nearly six hours. In 1917, he beat Cannonball Baker’s three-flag record, going from Canada to Mexico in three days and 25 minutes. Artley also set numerous sidecar records, once with legendary racer Jim Davis as passenger. Goodyear advertised Artley’s record runs nationwide to promote its line of motorcycle tires. By the 1920s, law enforcement and increased motor vehicle traffic put a damper on the city-to-city records runs. Artley closed out his racing career in hillclimbing. His last national was at the Santa Ana, Calif., National Hillclimb in 1921. He finished seventh in that event. Artley remained active in the motorcycle industry long after his racing career ended in the 1920s, consulting for various manufacturers, including Indian and Henderson. He was instrumental in the development of the smooth-running Henderson four-cylinder models, and he worked extensively to promote the Henderson models, too. He also found work as a motojournalist, penning a series of articles for The Motorcyclist magazine detailing the “pioneer days” of motorcycle racing in America. Artley died on Dec. 23, 1952, in Los Angeles He was 59 years old at the time of his death.Category
Class of 1998