The journals of the day enumerated the various types of motocycles, and while they tended to be mind-numbing in their minutiae—imagine page after page of sentences like “The axletrees, which are fixed to the body of the wagon, divide at the end into vertical forks”—they did help inventors stay abreast of the latest developments. “As I look back,” the inventor Maxim wrote, “I am amazed that so many of us began work so nearly at the same time, and without the slightest notion that others were working on the problem.”

So the Times-Herald race of 1895 was less about competition than it was about proving that the motocycle was a reliable source of transportation. That and providing the far-flung hobbyists working on its development the chance to come together and lay eyes on one another’s machines. come together and lay eyes on one another’s machines.



Frank Duryea was the original automotive hot foot. Not because he could drive a motocycle fast—which he could, fast being a relative term—but because he had a habit of warming his feet in the stove as he sat up dreaming about ways to improve his contraption.

Duryea had grown up on a farm in Illinois, in the shadow of his brother Charles, who was six years older. When Charles graduated college in 1882 he delivered a speech on “rapid transit” that envisioned a time when “the humming of flying machines will be music over all lands.” Charles and Frank shared hobbies, including mechanical tinkering and reading scientific journals and patents. Around 1891, when they were living together near Springfield, Mass., they learned of the gas engine being developed in Germany by Nikolaus Otto.
Intrigued, they began work on their own version. In 1892, they somehow procured $1,000 in funding from Erwin F. Markham, a nurse with whom Charles had a passing acquaintance. Then Charles went back to Peoria to tend to business, leaving Frank to carry out and refine their work. He bounced ideas off of his friend David Nesbitt, who rented him a room. (Years later, Mrs. Nesbitt recalled: “Many a night, Mr. Duryea would work in the kitchen on his plans until quite late; sometimes he would fall asleep, with his feet in the oven.”) By the following fall, Frank had successfully taken a brief spin in what some today hold to be the first gas-powered automobile in the U
The Duryea brothers' "road wagon," not quite at cruising speed, in Springfield.Come 1895, Frank Duryea was ready to race. Everyone else? Not so much. Kohlsaat had set a date of Nov. 2 and had received more than 80 entries, but by Halloween only one other machine was on-site and in racing shape: the gas vehicle of H.H. Mueller, of Decatur, Ind.

Another issue: Chicago itself wasn’t yet ready for a motocycle race. As Mueller drove his car into the city, he was stopped by police who told him he had no right to be on the street unless he was being pulled by a horse. Kohlsaat successfully scrambled to get the new vehicles road-approved, but he accepted that it was too soon for a race. Duryea’s arrival gave him just two cars, so he decided to push the actual contest back several weeks to Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, and in the meantime hold an exhibition, on Nov. 2. Duryea and Mueller’s Benz, piloted by his son Oscar, would drive to Waukegan, Ill., and back, with a purse of $500 to be split between whoever covered the 92 miles in under 13 hours. (A third vehicle, piloted by a notorious con artist named E.J. Pennington, showed up after the start and attempted to traverse the course.)
Kohlsaat’s competitors, throughout, delighted in seeing his dream event run into trouble, with one Tribune headline dubbing the exhibition a “scrub race.” When the day arrived, newspaper reports varied on the size of the crowd, with the Tribune asserting that “200 commuters ... and a crowd of interested spectators—only about 499,600 short of the advertised half a million”—were on hand. The Trib’s story recounted how Pennington’s vehicle “quit after interested citizens and small boys had pushed it up a hill which it could not climb otherwise” and even included a line drawing of the spectators shoving the motocycle.

Another paper reported that some 150,000 people peppered the route, suggesting that crowd estimates were just as sketchy 125 years ago as they are today. But there was definitely interest. When Mueller’s Benz hit the halfway point, Scientific American reported, “all Waukegan turned out to view the novel spectacle.” Duryea was cruising along at 15 miles per hour when he came upon a farmer’s wagon being pulled by a team of horses. He sounded his horn and went to pass on the left, but the farmer turned in the same direction, leaving Duryea with no choice but to drive into a ditch. Had the yellow flag been invented, it would have come out.

Mueller finished in 9 1/2 hours, driving at roughly 10 miles per hour. His car consumed just over five gallons of gas, at a total cost of less than $1
The Mueller-mobile made Chicago-to-Waukegan-and-back in under 10 hours.

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