The Phantom Duck Kept Barstow to Vegas Alive Until 1983

Twelve hundred riders, shoulder to shoulder, on a mile-long line.

It is 8:00am on November 30, 1974, the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, about 20 miles east of Barstow, California. The line runs 1.2 miles across the desert floor. Most of the bikes are packed into the first half mile. Somewhere about three miles ahead, a smoke bomb marks where the course begins.

The first wave goes, all at once.

Nobody can see the smoke. It is not thick enough yet, and 1,200 motorcycles have just lifted the desert into the air. The dust cloud takes eight to ten minutes to clear.

This is the Barstow to Vegas Hare and Hound, billed as the world's largest motorcycle race. It started in 1967 with 619 riders. By 1971 it drew about 3,500. This year the entry is capped at 3,000, and the cap filled weeks early.

The rules are simple. First rider to finish wins. Each bike carries a card taped to the gas tank, and race officials mark it at checkpoints nobody is told about in advance. Miss one and the card shows it. Pits for gas and parts sit 30 to 50 miles apart.

At 8:57am the second wave goes. About 1,800 novice and beginner riders, same mass start, same white smoke, same white dust. Only the few riders out front can see the marker.

The course runs more than 155 miles, through dry lakes and rocky passes, to a finish about nine miles south of Las Vegas. Around 11:30am the first two finishers come in together. The big crowd of riders does not start arriving until after noon, and they keep coming all afternoon.

This year there are watchers on the course too. About 20 federal land monitors stand along the route, checking where the riders go and what the bikes leave behind.

In 1975 the Bureau of Land Management refuses the permit. The biggest motorcycle race in the world is over.

Except it isn't, quite.

That Thanksgiving weekend, about 500 riders head out over the old course anyway. No permit, no race, no trophy. It is a protest ride, and the man leading it is Louis McKey, known to everyone as the Phantom Duck of the Desert. The money it raises goes to a legal fund to bring the race back.

He does it again the next year, and every Thanksgiving after that. In 1980 a new federal desert plan maps out a course for another off-road race and leaves Barstow to Vegas out entirely. It looks finished. The Duck keeps riding.

Behind the protest rides, the motorcycle clubs and their national association do the slow work. They ask for a smaller race, 1,200 riders instead of 3,000, on a set course. The government studies it for most of two years. A permit finally comes in August 1983. Environmental groups sue to stop it. On November 18, 1983, eight days before the start, a federal judge rules for the race.

On Thanksgiving weekend 1983, Barstow to Vegas runs again, nine years after the dust settled on that mile-long line.

Did you ride B to V, or ride the protest runs in between?