Reading our recent feature on the California Air Resource Board’s plans to end the Red Sticker program and lock even more people out of public lands got me to thinking about just how radically things have changed in the California desert since I started riding there. It reminded me of a lot of good times but also just how it all went to hell. If you were lucky enough to live, ride and race in the era when the desert was open and free, you’re lucky. It will never be that way again.
I arrived in California in 1968, with a Bultaco 250 strapped to the back of my station wagon. Ohio was a long distance away, but there was nothing back there for me to miss. As I got closer to Barstow, California, I saw vast open areas of desert to the right and the left. At this point I was tempted to take the Bultaco off the racks and go riding a little bit.
But I had no idea of whether this was legal or not. It looked so open! Wide open! But what if I would break down out there? It took a bit of common sense, but I decided to keep driving.
I ran into my old buddy Tom in Los Angeles, and we decided to have a few cold beers and talk about things. One of the first things I asked him was about the desert. Tom had a 441 BSA Victor and told me that he would take me out to the desert the very next weekend. He got out a copy of Cycle News and scanned the list of events.
There was a desert race in Pioneer Town that coming weekend and Tom figured that would be the perfect place for me to have my first exposure to the desert. We both signed up, along with hundreds of other riders. Toms race was in the 500 novice class, way before mine. While he was out racing, I tried to start the Bultaco. No luck there.
Tom said I could race his bike if I wanted to, so we went over to sign up for another class. The lady behind the table said I’d have to race in the 500 expert class, which was sort of a jolt to me in that I’d never turned a wheel in the desert before. But what the hell I figured, the $10 entry fee was more than fair.
The start was unique inside an old abandoned Western town. We had to stand across the street and when the flag got waved, you had to run like crazy to your bike, fire it up and go racing. It took about a dozen kicks for me to fire up the 441 BSA, which when you think about it, was a good thing. Consider this: there were about 100 experts on the starting line and one inexperienced geek. Me.
I won’t go into details about how poorly I did, but in the hour and 45 minute race, I got lapped by a rider on a Husqvarna, who I later found out went by the name of J. N. Roberts.
That turned out to be the very first of many desert races. On a typical Sunday, we’d show up at the track and there would be between 700 and 1000 riders. On an ordinary event. People seem to be having a great time. Kids were riding on minibikes around the area, ladies were cooking burgers on grills, and after the races, guys would gather around a few cold beers and talk about the racing.
Back then, you can buy used dirt bike for five or $600, get a 5 gallon can of gas for under five bucks and even the entry fee was affordable. You never saw hassles at these events. People were polite, and friendly.
I rode a great deal in the 70s and the 80s. The first few years I was in California, it was pretty much the same. All kinds of places to ride, no rules and regulations to speak of, and more events than you could ever think about. My favorite events were Europeans scrambles. These were desert races with a typical time limit of an hour and 45 minutes for each race. The laps in these events were usually about 10 to 15 miles each and it made for some fun racing. Heck, you could even run more than one class if you had the bikes. Or maybe you could just ride in the 500 class and they waited two hours in ride in the veterans class.
Then things started getting strange. There were less events happening all the time and the Sierra Club started getting downright nasty on land use. There were some races that were suddenly off-limits, usually because of some lame reason like an endangered tortoise.
But it really started to hit home in 1974, when the Bureau of Land Management introduce the green sticker. It cost $15 and it was good for two years. And if you had one of these stickies, you could go in ride on desert land with no hassles. If you didn’t have one on your bike, you could find yourself staring at a pretty hefty fine.
Most riders simply bit the bullet and popped the 15 bucks for a sticker. The rule was not heavily enforced and many riders didn’t even bother to get a green sticker. Like I said, things were much simpler in those early days. We couldn’t even comprehend what would be happening in a few more years.
The Sierra Club never really was that powerful until 1978. Then, California turned wildly democratic and that meant all manners of rules, regulations and deadly serious environmental laws took place. Louis McKey, also known as the Phantom Duck of the desert, saw the land slowly and surely being taken away from us. He saw the bikers being herded into a small pocket of desert called Soggy Dry Lake. He tried to work within the system, but found out that the AMA district 37 in California were determined to work with the Bureau of land management.
What really set McKey off, was the canceling of a 1975 Barstow to Vegas desert classic race; this race had been run for eight years and was certainly must for every off-road rider in the Southwest. In 1974, 3500 riders started that race, making it a fantastic event.
The BLM, seeing this many people having fun freaked out! When the San Gabriel Valley motorcycle club reapplied for the event in 1975, they were denied on the flimsiest of pretexts. They said that the desert tortoise had been protected and that the dirt bikes threatened their existence. This completely ignored the fact that the race was run on Thanksgiving weekend, and this was a cold time of year; all the tortoises were sleeping in little holes in the ground.
Strangely, the BLM offered later to let the Barstow to Vegas race happen again, or trade the event for new land to be opened up in the near future. They made this offer to those in charge of district 37. Now, we didn’t know the district officers all that well, but it seemed to us that if they bought that song and dance routine that the BLM gave them, they would be prime candidates for swamp land in Florida. But as the story went, they bought it, hook, line and the proverbial sinker, which brought us to 1979. No new land had been opened up we effectively lost the Barstow to race and several others of importance.
McKey started the first unorganized Barstow to Vegas trail ride on the date of the canceled race in 1975. That first trail ride was less than a blazing success as only about 25 bikers showed up and rode all the way to Las Vegas according to the BLM. And you know what? The earth did not end. The desert did not die. Dust clouds did not encircle the planet. Species of wildlife did not perish and Indian burial grounds were not violated. And to the best of our knowledge, no tortoises were disturbed.
Reacting to this, the BLM went absolutely bug nuts. They flipped out and effectively the BLM redlined! They did this, largely because they realized that sooner or later, someone would step up to challenge them. After all, the company goes so long and so far abusing the process, before someone did something they knew it had to come. And they were ready.
McKey and I had to show up in court because he was threatening to trail ride once again in 1979, and I was doing a story on it. This was to take place on closed land. Every other day of the year, that land was open for almost anything. Yet the BLM, reacting to pressure exerted by the Sierra Club, sued McKey and me for participating in a Barstow to Vegas trail ride. At this point, we were getting quite a bit of press and riders started to get very pissed off how they were being treated… And how the Duck was being treated.
On November 25, 1978, history was made. Hundreds of people showed up to ride. More came as support crews for part of the massive peaceful protest. In desperation, the BLM Rangers spent all of the day before the nonevent trying to discourage people from riding. They handed out incomplete copies of the court order and said that if more than 50 people rode with the Duck, they might get arrested. That word might was in quotes.
The protest ride was a blazing success. According to the BLM, 580 riders actually rode and several thousand additional people were in the pits. Of course they only counted up until 9 o’clock. We had some friends count, as riders were leaving as late as noon, and their count was slightly over 1200 riders.
The BLM said that the mass start at the Barstow to Vegas race was destructive to the desert. Well, the original starting point of the race was at the Minneola road offramp. This so-called sensitive area is now officially a tank testing ground for the U.S. Army. A bunch of giant tanks are now running around there making tracks deeper than 1 million bikes could ever make.
Even more astounding, is the fact that all of this wholesale pillage of public land will not even require an environmental impact study. Yet, if a club wants to put on a race or an on the same terrain, they have to file one of those expensive and time-consuming studies.
Well, we went to court against the Bureau of land management and the Sierra Club and actually won the case. This was the first of many federal lawsuits that we were involved in. Let me tell you, they are no fun at all. At one time, McKey and I were about $200,000 in the hole with legal fees alone. Thank God I was the editor of Dirt Bike at the time and was able to raise enough money from the readers to pay for the lawyers.
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