“American Motorcycle Girls 1900-1950: A Photographic History of Early Women Motorcyclists” was released in June 2009 by Parker House Publishing. This 240-page keepsake is gorgeous and just a joy to flip through. It chronicles the personal stories and nearly 400 photos of early women riders. The Forward is written by Karen Davidson, the daughter of Harley-Davidson styling legend Willie G. Davidson.

Author Cristine Sommer Simmons has quite a history with motorcycling and writing. She grew up a tomboy in the suburbs of Chicago where she got her first taste of motorcycles at age 9. Among her many achievements, she co-founded Harley Woman Magazine in 1985, was a freelance motorcycle journalist for Hot Bike in Japan for 12 years, wrote the children’s book “Patrick Wants to Ride,” and is a three-time inductee into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

Cris started collecting old photos of women on motorcycles 30 years ago. It took her nearly two years working 12-hour days to assemble the book, which she modeled after Stephen Wright’s American Racer publications. Much of that time was spent identifying the women in the black and white photos, contacting families and museums, and researching different collections of motorcycle literature and memorabilia.

“My biggest challenge was getting permission to use the old photos,” she told blogcast host Adrian Blake on Ride! in an August 2009 interview. “I wanted to include as many of these women as I could,” a testament to the book’s long Acknowledgment section.

A variety of women motorcyclists are represented in the book: a glamour girl, cross-country riders, daredevils, and racers including:

• Gloria Tramontin Struck, the longest serving member of the Motor Maids women riders;
• Easter Walters, silent film actress and stunt rider;
• Margaret Gast, one of the first female “wall of death” performers and self-taught motorcycle mechanic;
• Olive Hagger, first female to own a motor drome featuring an all-girl team of riders;
• Avis and Effie Hotchkiss, first mother and daughter to ride their motorcycle and sidecar 5,000 miles from New York to San Francisco;
• Bessie Stringfield, first African American woman to ride solo eight times cross country in the late 1920’s;
• Clara Wagner, first woman to compete in a long-distance endurance race from Chicago to Indianapolis with a perfect score; and
• Cookie Crum, the “Queen of the Hell Drivers” who rode the motor drome in the 1950’s. She was inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame this year.

The photographs may show women wearing skirts and bonnets–considered proper attire back in the day. However, these early motorcycle queens knew how to unravel the gravel with their gutsy free spirit. Van Buren sisters Adeline and Augusta, who rode Pike’s Peak–which had never been done before and these women did it on motorcycles, were arrested for wearing trousers in public. Dorothy Wright, a motorcycle courier-turned-racer in New York City, got a ticket for speeding her Indian motorcycle down Fifth Avenue. She was going 18 mph. Clara Wagner, the endurance racer mentioned earlier, was denied her victory trophy by the American Federation of Motorcyclists because she was a girl.

Having been a motorcycle journalist for 20-something years, Cris thought she knew a lot about motorcycle history. What astonished her to learn was the number of women who rode motorcycles in the early days and the things they were doing before women even had the right to vote. According to Cris, these plucky women rode cross country on unpaved roads without maps, gas stations or Motel 6’s. They took what they could carry and slept on their motorcycles or in farm fields. They had a spirit about themselves to ride motorcycles during a time when very few men drove cars and trucks, never mind motorcycles.

Cris’s goal was to publish a photographic history for people inspired by venturesome women who broke barriers in the first half of the 20th century. If you are a motorcycle enthusiast, history buff or chaser of dreams, I highly recommend “American Motorcycle Girls 1900-1950: A Photographic History of Early Women Motorcyclists.” It’ll be one of those books on your coffee table that everyone will want to walk away with. You’ll need to use your Lo-jack on it, for sure.