Merwyn “Red” Fleming and the Box Springs Race Track
By Panhead Jim | Published November 17, 2013
Merwyn “Red” Fleming was one of those Southern California racers who looks right at home in every old dirt-track photo. In the 1946 Box Springs shots, he is wearing Riverside Bombers MC gear, working a Harley-Davidson flathead race bike around the Riverside dirt, and carrying the California “X” on the rear number plate. Fleming was no bystander. He looks like a rider who had spent plenty of time sliding one.
Red Fleming at Box Springs
Fleming was born November 26, 1916, and lived in Riverside, California. He served as a U.S. Navy chief machinist’s mate and came out of the same postwar Southern California world that filled the desert, TT courses, and dirt ovals with fast club riders. His first name appears in records as Merwyn, but around Riverside, the nickname that stuck was Red.
The Box Springs photographs put Fleming right in the middle of the local racing scene in 1946. He is shown on a Harley-Davidson 45-inch flathead racer, possibly a WR, though the safer call is a stripped-down Harley flathead race bike built for Class C-style competition. The photos show a racer dressed for club competition rather than show, with the Bombers MC sweater, open dirt course, and the kind of hard-packed Riverside surface that made a motorcycle move around underneath the rider.
The California “X” on the plate is a small detail, but it dates the photos to the old regional race-number system and ties Fleming to the Pacific Coast racing crowd. Complete result sheets for Fleming have not turned up, but these photos are enough to place him with the riders and clubs that kept Riverside busy after the war.
Riverside Bombers Motorcycle Club
Fleming rode with the Riverside Bombers Motorcycle Club, one of the Southern California clubs tied to both dirt racing and desert competition. The Bombers were known for the Cactus Derby, a two-day desert race that started around 1945 and ran the Victorville-to-Lucerne country and back. That race belongs in the same hard-riding desert tradition as the Big Bear Run and the Catalina Grand Prix, even though Catalina came later and had its own island-road flavor.
That club background says a lot about Fleming. A rider in the Bombers could not stay boxed into one narrow kind of competition. Southern California racers ran what was available: TT races, dirt ovals, field meets, hare scrambles, desert runs, and anything else a club could mark out with flags and hay bales. A Harley or Indian 45 had to be light enough to throw into a turn, strong enough to finish, and simple enough to keep alive between races.
Box Springs gave those riders a local track close to Riverside, but the same men and machines were part of a much wider scene. The old Bombers events linked city riders, desert racers, and track men in one rough family of competition.
Box Springs Race Track
Box Springs Race Track sat at the base of Box Springs Mountain, east of Riverside in the area that later became tied to Moreno Valley. The track was near the ground where Riverside International Raceway would open in 1957, but Box Springs belonged to an older motorcycle period. It was a short dirt course, usually described as about six-tenths of a mile, with enough turns to make it more than a simple round-and-round oval.
The place had the feel of a Southern California club track: open ground, dust, cars parked along the edge, riders leaning hard into the turns, and the mountain sitting behind it all. It did not need big grandstands to draw a crowd. The racing was close, the surface was loose, and the course kept the rider busy every lap.
Box Springs was active by 1946 and kept showing up in Southern California motorcycle racing into the early 1950s. The track was still remembered in local history by 1955 as a popular motorcycle-racing spot. After Riverside International Raceway opened nearby and the area kept changing, the old Box Springs course faded out. The track itself is gone now, but the photos keep the shape of the place alive: dirt, scrub, hillside, and motorcycles crossed up in the turns.
The 1946 Pacific Coast TT Scene
The best-known Box Springs race from that period was the 50-mile Pacific Coast TT Championship on December 8, 1946. Rain delayed the race twice before the riders finally got on the course. It drew a strong Pacific Coast field, including Floyd Emde, Ed “Iron Man” Kretz, Bud Jorgensen, Fred Ford, Chuck Basney, Bruce Pearson, Kelly Myers, Ted Evans, and other fast regional men.
That race says plenty about the level of competition Fleming was riding around. These were not parade laps for local club members. Emde and Kretz were already big names, and the Pacific Coast TT field was full of riders who could run hard on heavy hand-shift 45s for lap after lap. In the 50-mile race, Emde won after Kretz led early and then went down around lap 30. The course was short enough that the riders had to make dozens of passes over the same ruts, bumps, and polished clay.
Fleming’s photos belong to that same Box Springs atmosphere. Whether the camera caught him during practice, a local meet, or race-day action, the setting is the same Riverside dirt world that produced the Pacific Coast TT crowd. The track connected local riders like Fleming with the better-known names moving through Southern California racing.
Southern California Racing After the War
Postwar Southern California had the right mix for motorcycle racing: returning servicemen, mechanical skill, used machines, open ground, and active clubs. AMA District 37 was full of riders who could run a dirt track one weekend and chase a desert course the next. A rider could learn throttle control in the dirt, endurance in the desert, and courage anywhere the course got rough.
Harley-Davidson and Indian 45-inch race bikes were the backbone of that Class C world. The best-prepared WRs and Scouts were fast, but plenty of club racers rode machines built up from what they could afford and keep running. A good rider mattered as much as the badge on the tank. Fleming’s Harley flathead sits right in that period: lean, stripped, and made to be ridden hard rather than admired from a distance.
That same racing culture fed bigger events across the region, from local TT courses to island racing and the desert classics. It also fed national names. Floyd Emde would go on to win the 1948 Daytona 200, and riders like Kretz had already made their reputations before many of the postwar club racers ever got to chase them into a turn.
What Remains of Box Springs
Merwyn “Red” Fleming died April 21, 1999, and is buried at Riverside National Cemetery. The track where these photos were taken disappeared long before that, swallowed by the same growth that changed so much of inland Southern California. Box Springs is no longer a place where a rider can unload a flathead and go race under the mountain.
That makes the Fleming photos worth keeping close. They show a Bombers MC rider in his own country, on the kind of motorcycle that built the postwar dirt-track scene one race at a time. No polished factory setup, no modern safety fence, no corporate pit lane. Just a Riverside club racer, a Harley flathead, a short dirt course, and the sharp edge of Southern California motorcycle racing in 1946.