Kimberly A. (Reed) Edwards
Adapted from “The Champ Who Mentored a Champ,”
Fort Sutter Motorcycle Club newsletter, April, 2021
Born in Illinois in 1893, Archie Burdette Rife came to the West Coast after his parents divorced. In high school he played quarterback on his football team. By 1915 he lived in Sacramento and joined the Capital City Motorcycle Club. He participated in many runs and with Otto Link, made the finals of a Whist tournament – a signature competition handed down from the Wheelmen. Working as a mechanic at Upson-Kimball Sporting Goods, Rife repaired Popes and Harleys, developing the skills to one day open his own repair shop.
In a 1917 Harley sidecar, Rife and fellow Sacramentan Carl Mankel broke a record traveling from Sacramento to Stockton. They arrived in 54 minutes, thrashing the existing record by 11 minutes. Mankel would later become a timer for AMA-sponsored races.
Archie Rife (l) and Carl Mankel, (center), reached Stockton in 54 minutes, smashing
the previous record by 11 minutes. To the right, Sacramentan Frank Woodson,
State Referee. Pacific Motorcyclist and Western Wheelman Magazine.
In 1918 Rife was elected club Captain. In October of the following year, a repair business “Rife and Zingg” advertised Harley expert mechanics at 518 I Street. The business offered for sale “one 1915 Harley fully equipped, $275.” Partner George Zingg, whose dad owned a tavern at 51st and Folsom, was a mechanic who would later be caught bootlegging alcohol during Prohibition and would also make headlines when he drank strychnine 4th and J over a disappointing love affair. Zingg’s name lasted only a few months in Rife’s ads and was soon replaced by an eye-catching business name: The Harley Shop. Early ads boasted of a business “successor to William A. Langley,” Sacramento’s Excelsior dealer when Balke raced here in 1911. Rife’s ads stressed helping customers to save money. Ads said, Do you know that we repair all makes of motorcycles? That we sell second-hand machines only? Harley with sidecar $200 cash, good condition.
It wasn’t long before a young Joe Petrali began visiting Rife’s shop located at 919 8th Street. Eventually Rife hired the teenager. Noting an unusual mechanical ability, Rife mentored him, helping to convert an Indian single to a racing bike. When the elder took Petrali to a Capital City Motorcycle Club meeting, the young mind entertained himself by doodling in pencil his name and the title “Historian” in club records.
Even as he mentored Petrali, Rife himself exhibited stellar performance in hill climbs. He beat Dudley Perkins at the 1920 “Vallejo Climbing Bee,” as one newspaper termed the event. The Vallejo Motorcycle Club called Brownlie Hill “a hill said to be impossible of being surmounted.” A newspaper described “a long and gradual rise, so that the very best of sport is promised.” The following year, at an Auburn hill climb, Rife won First Place, 300 yards up in 12 seconds, a spectacular show on an Indian. Perkins at 14.4 couldn’t beat Rife’s score. At the San Juan Capistrano hill climb, Rife was the only competitor besides Perkins to go over the hill, but the Sacramentan swerved off course, leading to disqualification. Another time, Perkins himself went off course during the trials, but was announced as the winner. Rife, a close second, protested, and was declared the winner.
Archie Rife fought snow on a Harley J in an early 1920’s hill climb.
Courtesy of Marnie/Archie Rife Archives
Rife also shined in endurance races. He set a world record after riding 77 hours in a local competition, exceeding the 70-hour 10-minute record. He and Petrali competed in several races together. A 24-hour run compelled riders to leave the Chamber of Commerce at 7th and H, running 12 miles along the Natomas Trestle. The purpose was to see how long an engine could run. Gas and oil were added while machines were running. Six hundred people stayed up all night outside the Chamber of Commerce building to witness the hourly completion of laps, totaling 600 miles. After 15 hours, Rife dropped out due to illness. Petrali’s Indian ran out of gas. In a similar race, both riders rode until the club stopped them after 76 hours. Rife came in at 1 a.m. and Petrali 36 minutes later, two days after firing up their engines. In 1923 Rife served on the club committee to oversee the 620 mile endurance, to Reno, including two times around Lake Tahoe: 28 hours and three check-in stations.
Rife was recognized for his machine handling skills. A greyhound racing series at the California State Fair in 1920 found Rife as the rider who pulled the fake rabbit ahead of the dogs.
In 1922, Rife embarked on a unique investigation when an old vault, formerly used by railroad pioneers Huntington, Hopkins, Crocker and Stanford was located on the second floor in the main office of the Central Pacific Railroad at 54 K Street. The safe was rumored to contain secrets, possibly money. Attempts to pry open the steel lodged in the brick walls made any breach close to impossible. Rife and J. F. Jones, a safe expert, arrived with tools and an acetylene torch. For hours they toiled to breach the doors. As Rife and Jones got close to dislodging the locks, reporters leaned in with cameras to catch the first glimpse of a possible fortune. Everyone wanted to get the first picture of a treasure. At last the massive doors swung open. To everyone’s disappointment, the safe turned out to be empty.
On Sept 15, 23, The Sacramento Bee announced a change in Rife’s business from the Harley Shop to, Indian Motorcycle Agency, promising the same “unexcelled service” after having “ purchased the entire stock of parts and machines from former agent.” It was unclear as to who the former agent was, since Hiram Holy Cameron, Sacramento’s long-time Indian dealer, remained in business a t 4th and J.
After adding radios to his inventory, Rife moved to 1217 J Street for “bigger and better facilities to make my service excelled anywhere.” But confusion continued when Cameron asserted that he remained distributor for Indian motorcycles. A 1923 Sacramento Bee listed ads for both dealers calling themselves Indian distributor. Regardless of how this worked out, it’s likely that both men kept an eye on the celebrated new 74” Big Chief. A contest sponsored by the Bay Area Pacific Motor Supply offered a prize to the person who could guess how many parts the new model carried. The answer was purportedly revealed via telegram from the Indian factory, but it’s unknown if the answer ever made its way to Sacramento.
Eventually Rife’s ads clarified that his business was a repair shop. By 1924, as bicycle production increased in the U.S., Rife would be do what other motorcycle businesses did: add a line of bicycles to their inventory. “Doll up your bike,” said one of Rife’s ads. Twice the store was burglarized. Once, a box of platinum magneto points valued at $100 was stolen. A few days later stamps and $4 in pennies were stolen from the register.
By 1925, rising star Petrali was named a starter at the newly-organized AMA’s 100-mile championship in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He made history when his Indian didn’t arrive and he ended up on Ralph Hepburn’s Harley, exceeding 100 mph. A few days later, a letter to Rife in Sacramento arrived from the Indian Motorcycle Company:
…I suppose by this time you have learned that Joe Petrali won the big race. Was going to ride M-20 and in fact had already qualified on M-10 .However, M-20 did not get there and in order for Joe to get his appearance money he had to ride something, so he rode Hepburn’s machine which blew up the day before the race. There did not seem to be a chance that this job would hang together, but it did and Joe won the thousand dollars…
Very truly yours, (Mr.) Carey, Manager, Parts Department Indian Motorcycle Company
By 1929, as Petrali zoomed to stardom, Rife had closed his Indian business and joined the payroll of William Langley, who was now repairing motorcycles and serving as expert locksmith. By 1930, with three children, Rife became a theatre motion picture operator. He faced a devastating blow in 1934 when his youngest son Robert, age 12, died in a freak accident when he slipped off a ladder while playing in his father’s tool shed.
While Rife continued serving as a projectionist, champion speeder and hill climber Petrali put a Harley racer over the one-mile Daytona Beach course at 136.183 mph, a record which stood for 11 years. After WWII, Rife worked at the News Reel Theater. He died in 1952 at age 58, after seeing his former student Petralie put a Sacramento stamp on motorcycle history. Rife was buried at East Lawn on Folsom Blvd. How proud he would be to see the Joe Petrali exhibit at the American Motorcycle Association.
Nice article!