1964 “ JACK PINE “ MOTORCYCLE 520 MILE ENDURANCE RACE LANSING TO WEST BRANCH MICHIGAN XD14284

Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference. This color film from 1964 celebrates The Jack Pine Motorcycle Race, aka Jake Pine Enduro, probably the best known motorcycle endurance run of all time. It takes place in Michigan’s back country. Riders face numerous obstacles and varied terrain, guiding their motorcycles through rivers, miles of deep sand, up and down hills, through mud, tangled underbrush, etc. The ultimate winner receives a cowbell. Opening: Motorcycles cross a river. One is stuck in the mud. Title: JACK PINE! 530 Americans drove 524 miles (:06-:52). Cars drive down a highway. Man on a motorcycle. Labor Day weekend, the Jack Pine Race. Lansing, MI, the base for the race. Trophies on a table. The cowbell is the ultimate prize. Contestants clean and tune up their motorcycles (:53-2:49). The Chairman looks over paperwork. Motorcycles are numbered and inspected. On the eve of the race, a banquet is held for speakers and people eat. 5:30 a.m., Men mount their bikes. Crowd watches. The men wear helmets and are ready (2:50-4:53). Longines stopwatch. Referee blows a whistle and the race begins. West Branch, MI is the finish line. Good weather as the motorcycles go down unpaved roads (4:54-6:21). Motorcycles drive down a paved road, only 10% of the course is paved. Motorcycles cross the Grand River. Most bikes make it, some do not. A man smokes a cigarette and sits mid-stream, his bike has conked out (6:22-8:04). A rider pulls his fallen bike out of the water. Out of the water and up the muddy bank (8:05-9:51). The man with the flooded engine continually tries to start his bike. On sand flats, the race continues. There are sand traps here. Motorcycles pick up decent speed in this part of the race. Bike cuts through the sand. Oscar Lenz, a founding member of the Lansing Motorcycle Club and their first president, played a role in the success of the race. An off-road rider himself, Lenz won seven out of the first fourteen events before turning his attention to trailblazing in 1937.  As a trailblazer, he would work from sun up to sun down for two weeks laying out the course each year. Riders trudge through the sand, a bike wipes out (9:52-12:12). Indian motorcycle (11:30). A man has trouble on his wobbly cycle in the sand. Now the bikes are on an unpaved dirt road going through tall grass and into a wooded area. Motorcycles get stuck in a new hazard: muddy water. Volunteers use chains to help pull bikes out of the mud (12:13-14:46). Bikes are pulled out of the muddy water onto the banks. Some motorcyclists work on their bikes after this section, the lucky ones keep going. They enter a wooded area. Checkpoint. The men on their bikes continue onward, up a hill of sand. Bikes come down the hill on the other side, a motorcyclist wipes out as he’s going too fast and has a nasty crash. Medics and a doctor rush to the fallen man’s aid. He is motionless. Crowd gathers around (14:47-16:47). Smelling salts bring the man to. The doctor finds no breaks in the man’s bones. The rider continues. Sunset brings Day One to a close. 6 a.m. the next morning, Day Two: 200 people are already out after Day One. The bikes cut through a wooded, sandy area. A man wipes out in the sand, falls off his bike (16:48-18:50). Bikes make their way through thick sand. A man falls off face first into the sand, bloodied and bruised. (18:51-19:58). At a checkpoint, riders are given one hour to relax or tune up their bikes. Another river, motorcycles show up and some make it across, some get stuck, some fall. A bike goes down waist deep on the driver (19:59-21:37). People slowly make it through the water. Some men are stuck. Out of the river and up a hill. Others remain stuck in high waters (21:38-23:04). The remaining riders go down a trail, now only 200 remain. Triumph (21:43). people make it to the finish line (23:05-24:30). The riders will find out the next day based on a point scale who the winner is. The 1964 winner is: Roger Kussmaul. He receives the cow bell and a trophy. Others hold class champion trophies. The winner rode a British Triumph motorcycle. A ’powder puff’ women’s race was also held and the winner was the only woman who finished. Men hold their trophies (24:31-26:16). End credits (26:17-26:39). Oscar Lenz, known to those in the Enduro world as the Old Jack ‍Piner, rode in the first 14 Jack Pines, and won seven times. He later became the chief organizer of the event, laying out the course every year from 1937 through the 1960s. Lenz was also a Harley-Davidson dealer in Lansing. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit