1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run | Eddie Mulder’s Royal Enfield Victory | Riding Vintage

1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run

The 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run sits right at the edge of an era. It was dusty, crowded, and big enough to overwhelm the older style of Southern California desert racing. It also gave sixteen-year-old Eddie Mulder one of the most famous wins of his career, riding a 500cc Royal Enfield in front of a field that was remembered as nearly a thousand riders strong.

Ralph Crane’s lead photograph from the dusty 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run, the final fully realized Big Bear event.

These Ralph Crane photographs are the reason the event still feels alive. The images show the dust, crowds, riders, and period competition machines that made Big Bear one of the great names in vintage motorcycle racing. They also show why the final fully realized Big Bear Run became difficult to repeat.

The Big Bear Run Before 1960

The first Big Bear Motorcycle Run was held in 1921. As the story goes, it began as a New Year’s night bar bet between a couple of riders in Los Angeles. The challenge was simple enough: see who could make the roughly 100-mile ride to Big Bear Lake first.

Racers and spectators crowd the scene in Crane’s Big Bear photo set, showing the scale of the 1960 desert race.

There was no set route in that first telling. One rider headed the back way through the desert, while the other tried the more direct road route. Since the bet was made in early January, the road approach ran into snow and the second rider was unable to complete the run. Whether every part of that origin story can be documented or not, it fits the way Big Bear was remembered: part endurance ride, part desert gamble, and part motorcycle folklore.

Dust hangs over the run as riders move through the kind of open terrain that made Big Bear famous.

After that first year, the run moved more firmly into the desert. More riders showed up, the event became organized around entry fees and trophies, and by the 1950s it had grown into one of the major Southern California motorcycle races. It belonged to the same world of mid-century competition that made events like the Catalina Grand Prix and other forms of 1950s motorcycle racing so memorable.

Crane captured the rough-edged crowd, machinery, and race-day atmosphere surrounding the final major Big Bear Run.

The Final Run: January 10, 1960

The last fully realized Big Bear Motorcycle Run was held on Sunday, January 10, 1960. A contemporary Royal Enfield advertisement published shortly after the event described Eddie Mulder’s win as coming after more than 150 miles of California desert and hills. Later preserved results and brand histories point toward 158 miles, so the safest wording is that the final run was roughly 150-plus miles of mixed desert and mountain racing.

The final run mixed desert speed, heavy dust, and long-distance endurance in one of Southern California’s best-known motorcycle events.

Nearly one thousand riders were associated with the event by 1960, though the more precise starter count is harder. Period advertising spoke of more than 1,000 entrants, while later Royal Enfield history and modern Mulder interviews standardized the number at about 765 starters. The best reading is that roughly 765 riders actually started, while the larger number reflects entries, registrations, or overall turnout around the event.

A period scene from the 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run, with the dust and crowd giving the race its visual character.

However the number is counted, the result was enormous for the roads and desert communities around Big Bear. Dust, traffic, spectators, and public-order pressure all worked against the older style of open desert run. The traditional explanation is that the amount of traffic generated by the event brought California Highway Patrol pressure, and the race was shut down for the following year. In practical terms, 1960 became the end of the old Big Bear Run.

Crane’s photographs make the dust problem impossible to miss, and that atmosphere helps explain the race’s reputation.

Eddie Mulder and Royal Enfield No. 249

The winner of the final run was Eddie Mulder, then only sixteen years old. The best period evidence identifies his motorcycle as a 500cc single-cylinder Royal Enfield “Fury,” the American-market name associated with the 500 Bullet. Later accounts and Royal Enfield’s own retrospective material tie the win to Royal Enfield number 249.

Riders at Big Bear faced open desert, heavy dust, spectators, and the traffic pressure that came with a massive turnout.

Mulder’s own later recollections give the race its drama. He remembered getting a poor start after stepping away as the banner went up, then charging through the field. In that telling, he reached the leading group after the opening loop, broke a right footpeg during the second loop, got fresh goggles and a replacement peg at a checkpoint, and then attacked the mountain leg through Rattlesnake Canyon. He crashed into trees, damaged the pipe and shock, recovered, and still won.

Another Crane image from the final Big Bear Run, showing how large the event had become by 1960.

That story should be treated as participant memory rather than a turn-by-turn official record, but it is still valuable because it comes from the rider who won. What can be said safely is that Mulder won the 1960 Big Bear Run on a dealer-prepared 500cc Royal Enfield desert racer, and that the victory became one of the defining moments of his early career.

The race drew a huge turnout, even though the exact count depends on whether entries, starters, or total attendance are being discussed.

How Many Riders Were There?

The rider count is one of the biggest traps in writing about the final Big Bear Run. “Over 1,000 entrants” appears in period Royal Enfield advertising, though that ad also treated the figure as subject to official confirmation. Later Royal Enfield material and modern Mulder interviews point to about 765 starters, while the older thousand-rider figure still makes sense as entries, registrations, or total turnout around the race.

Period riding gear, stripped competition machines, and dust define the look of Southern California desert racing in this image.

For a careful history, those numbers should not be forced into one false-precision answer. The event was huge by any standard: around a thousand riders, entrants, or registrations surrounded the run, while about 765 appear to have started. Only a fraction finished.

A rider and machine from the 1960 Big Bear Run; individual identities are left cautious unless supported by the photograph or records.

The Route Problem: Lucerne Valley, Rattlesnake Canyon, and Fawnskin

The exact 1960 route remains partly unresolved. Later histories preserve overlapping memories. One version places the last Big Bear pattern between Lucerne Valley, Fawnskin, and back toward Lucerne. Another, including Mulder’s later recollections, describes a Lucerne-based cloverleaf or loop structure with a decisive mountain section through Rattlesnake Canyon toward Big Bear country.

The final Big Bear Run was remembered for its mass of racers, desert terrain, and punishing race-day conditions.

Those accounts do not have to be completely incompatible, but they should not be turned into an official map without an original 1960 route sheet. No open-access 1960 program, complete start list, route sheet, or complete official results were located. The safest reconstruction is that the race began in the Lucerne Valley high desert, used a loop or cloverleaf structure, and included a crucial mountain leg toward the Fawnskin and Big Bear sector.

This Crane / LIFE image is part of the photo sequence often dated 1961 in archive metadata, though the event evidence points to 1960.

Ralph Crane’s Big Bear Photos

Photo credit goes to Ralph Crane, although you will find that his photos are often incorrectly dated as 1961. The LIFE and Google-hosted archive metadata commonly uses that later date, but the event evidence points to the 1960 final run. Crane’s photographs match the known Mulder victory, the scale of the final Big Bear, and the dust-filled atmosphere remembered from the last major running of the event.

The 1960 Big Bear Run sat at the edge of organized desert racing and mass motorcycle spectacle.

That provenance matters. These images are not just a random gallery of old desert racing scenes. They are one of the strongest visual records of the final Big Bear Motorcycle Run, showing the crowd, the machines, the riding gear, the dust, and the old competition atmosphere before this style of mass desert race disappeared.

Big Bear’s final major running brought together riders, spectators, dust, and traffic on a scale that helped end the old event.

The photographs also show why the event became hard to manage. Big Bear was not a small closed-course race by 1960; it was a rolling desert spectacle, with riders, spectators, roads, dust, and mountain access all tied together in one enormous day of racing.

Crane’s photographs remain one of the strongest visual records of the 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run.

That is the part of the story the photos carry better than a results sheet. The uncertainty around the route and the exact counts does not erase the scene Crane captured: hundreds of riders, a huge crowd, and a race big enough to become both legendary and unsustainable.

A race scene from the 1960 Big Bear Run, included here without forcing a rider, machine, or exact-location identification.

The End of an Era

The 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run was more than Eddie Mulder’s breakout win, and more than a dusty set of Ralph Crane photographs. It marked the end of an older Southern California racing format that had grown out of open country, loose routes, club culture, and long-distance endurance.

The field is best described cautiously: roughly 765 starters, with around a thousand entries, registrations, or overall turnout often reported.

By 1960, the run had become too big for that world. The same scale that made Big Bear famous also helped bring it to a close, and the final running now reads like a snapshot of desert competition before the boundaries tightened.

A dusty Big Bear scene from Crane’s final-race photo set, showing why the event became part of desert-racing memory.

Seen through Crane’s photos, the final Big Bear Run still has its full size: fast, dusty, crowded, improvised, and already at the edge of history.

The old Big Bear Run was not a closed-course stadium race; it belonged to Southern California’s broader desert and mountain-racing culture.

The event belonged to a moment when club racing, open terrain, and motorcycle spectacle could still overlap with fewer boundaries than later racers would know.

This photo shows the rough, crowded, dust-filled environment that made the Big Bear Run legendary.

By the time the dust settled, Big Bear had become both a benchmark win for Mulder and a symbol of a kind of desert racing that was reaching its limit.

Another Crane photograph from the 1960 Big Bear Run, kept in sequence with the rest of the surviving photo set.

That atmosphere is the reason the 1960 Big Bear Run still stands apart in American motorcycle racing history.

Competition motorcycles, spectators, and desert dust appear together in one of the final images from the Big Bear sequence.

It was not simply a win, a route, or a results sheet. It was one of the last great moments of the old Big Bear format, caught at the instant it had outgrown itself.

Crane’s archive gives the 1960 Big Bear Motorcycle Run its strongest surviving visual texture.

In Crane’s photographs, the old race remains visible at full scale.

The closing image in the sequence leaves the final Big Bear Run as it is remembered: fast, dusty, crowded, and already at the edge of history.