(motorcycle engine) - At the time, there weren't even motorcycle museums.

- Yeah!

- It wasn't even a thing.

- It wasn't even a thing.

It's overwhelming.

When you walk in the door, it's like, how could this all be here, all of this history in one place?

Collecting and preserving, it's one thing, but what this place is really about is getting the next generation inspired about where we came from.

This is actually the motorcycle that started the museum altogether.

♪ This is my dad's first machine.

He actually bought this bike when he was 15 years old.

He was behind an old service station on his way to school, and they ended up selling him the bike for $20.

He locked himself in the garage for about a month or two and rolled this motorcycle out.

The bike's a 1957 Harley-Davidson Servi car at its inception.

As you can see, it's all stripped down and rebuilt with that late 1960s kind of chopper look, so it was really the machine that ignited his passion for Harley-Davidson and his passion for motorcycles.

My dad was Dale Walksler, lifetime motorcyclist.

He opened his own motorcycle shop when he was fresh out of high school in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

At the age of 22, my dad became I believe the youngest Harley dealer in the history of the company.

My dad had always been passionate about motorcycle history, and as his early years as a Harley-Davidson dealer, started to develop a collection of vintage machines.

My dad started the museum as a car museum.

It was Dale's Classic Cars.

Over time, the cars became fewer, and the rare motorcycles became more and more prominent.

His appetite for early motorcycles was - fierce would be an understatement.

It had to be American-made.

He loved bikes with character, bikes with personality, bikes with great stories.

On my table to the right here is a 1903 Indian motorcycle considered by many in the transportation world to be one of the most important innovations of the 20th century.

Basically attach one of the earliest internal combustion engines to a bicycle chassis.

It's what we call a Camelback Indian, which got its name from this kind of rear gas tank and oil tank.

It was the beginning of personal motorized transportation in America, period.

- Before the motorcycle comes out, the fastest thing that the average person has ever seen is a horse at full gallop.

And so now you have these machines coming out that are running 30, 40, 50, you know, not very long, 60, 70 miles an hour.

It just had to be an incredible thing not only to see one, but even to be able to get on and ride one.

So your big companies, your Harleys, your Indians, your Excelsior motor companies were able to develop a transmission in about 1915 or debut it for 1915, the same year as this bike.

The only way to get the engine spinning is to spin the rear wheel.

Coming from bicycles, you spin the pedals to spin the wheel.

With the transmission, all of a sudden now your bike becomes capable and it becomes versatile.

You sense the beginning of motorcycling.

Those manufacturers learned that the best way to sell motorcycles or the best way to get in front of potential customers is to win through various competitions.

So as you move into the Great Depression, maintaining these big monster tracks made of wood, filling grandstands became increasingly difficult to do.

So huge growth in popularity of hill climbing in the 1920s.

It's a form of competition that really required significantly less of a financial impact.

Bikes on the hill here at the museum are some of the rarest motorcycles in the world, bar none.

Just to my left here is a one-off 1935 Harley Davidson 80 cubic inch factory hill climber.

The 80 cubic inch class definitely needed that big sturdy frame.

The gas tanks specially made for the frame.

Hill climbing, very much just like it sounds, the goal was to get to the top of the hill the fastest.

My dad found Maggie Valley by chance.

He was on his way back from a car show in Florida.

- Here's the fun part!

- Driving back to southern Illinois.

He was coming on I-40 and stopped to get fuel.

Driving in western North Carolina, the beauty attracts you.

Some of the prettiest mountains anywhere in the world.

- All right!

- He actually found this piece of property that day.

He decided to pick up and move here in 2001.

My dad extended the invitation for me to come work here at the museum.

Typical day, get the doors opened up, start to welcome visitors, spend the day sharing history, telling stories.

Museum closed at 5, 5 minute stand up dinner, head back to the shop.

The evenings in the shop, called it the 6 to midnight gig and most nights it went well past midnight.

Those moments for me were some of the most exciting periods of my life.

(engine starts) - Yeah!

Yeah!!

- Getting to revive one of those bikes and hear it run for the first time in maybe 80 or 90 years.

There was no thrill like it.

- Every day inside the museum we were firing up bikes all the time.

There are certain bikes though because of their rarity that we fire up on special occasions.

The Traub is one of those machines.

This is the only one that was ever made.

It's a one of one.

Everybody's heard of Harley, they've heard of Indian.

Nobody knows the name Traub.

In fact, nobody knew what this bike was when it was found in 1967.

So they're tearing down a building in Chicago at 1520 North Palina Street, knock through this brick wall.

As the dust clears, they see something sitting behind the wall, and here this bike is hidden.

And what we've been able to determine was this was built by a gentleman by the name of Richard Traub.

Based on the seat, the carb, and the mag, we know this bike was built about 1916.

But when you take the engine apart and you look at the bore and the stroke, it's around 78 cubic inches.

For that period of time, it was 20 years ahead of Harley and Indian and where their development was.

When most people think of a homemade motorcycle, you kind of have your mind to something that's been cobbled together.

You see all the weld marks.

There's no mistakes on this bike, but he poured his heart and soul into this.

If you build a machine that's this beautiful, this capable, why do you never do anything with it?

Unless somebody happens to come across Traub's diary at a yard sale somewhere, we're probably never going to be able to answer.

Because of its rarity, we don't run it all the time.

So we always tell people, "You never know when you're going to hear it run."

Because when I say special occasion, it doesn't mean that it's a special event at the museum.

Someday we just decide it's a special occasion.

And we're going to fire it up.

My dad passed in 2021 after a long battle with cancer.

He was sick for a long time.

You know, walking through the museum, you can still feel his presence.

He's everywhere in here.

I watched my dad over his many, many years inspire so many people.

I can only hope to do the same.

Working alongside Matt and Dale, they really are both cut from the same cloth.

I'm here because of the passion and excitement that Dale and Matt had for this stuff.

One of my favorite parts of this job is not just being able to share the history, we get to hear their stories.

You'll have a guy come in and he'll say, "Hey, my granddad rode a 1937 Knucklehead.

Do you have one?"

And so you go over there and you show it to them, and a lot of times these guys will just tear up because that was the first motorcycle they ever rode on.

- One of the earliest memories of being around motorcycles is my dad setting me on the seat of his 1948 Panhead while it was running and putting my hand on the throttle.

Seeing his excitability and seeing him be so passionate about something I think is also what really helped root this in me.

Having completed the project, I think it's a great honor to be able to be a part of this.

Having complete control over the direction you're headed.

You want to hear a run?

Yeah.

Excellent.

(engine starts) ♪