RIDING THROUGH HISTORY: ELDRED R. HARRINGTON’S HARLEY-DAVIDSON ADVENTURES

Harrington’s first article appears in The Enthusiast “Prospecting Along Old Apache Trails” in October, 1944. With it, we get a rare, full-page biographical introduction to the person behind the typewriter, including his numerous teaching roles, vast education (at least six advanced degrees in everything from in civil engineering, to geology and physical chemistry). The section concludes:

“Because of the importance of his geological work in locating available ore deposits needed in war work, the War Production Board recently approved an order permitting Dr. Harrington to purchase a 1944 Harley-Davidson. This new Harley-Davidson will replace his 1930 Harley-Davidson which has served him faithfully for many a rough mile. He has found motorcycle transportation vitally necessary in getting to the inaccessible spots where his work takes him.

Although his motorcycle is used mainly for exploratory trips, he has spent some of his happiest hours in the saddle. Like all riders, he has enjoyed much fun, many thrills and excitement while riding — experiences in the outdoors that only motorcyclists can have and appreciate.” 

Harrington took his own photos and wrote lengthy articles. His words and photographs appeared in more than 15 issues of The Enthusiast between 1944 and 1964. He wrote about and depicted many historical places and activities in the United States, riding everything from the Pony Express Route to the Santa Fe Trail, the Forty-Niner Trail, and parts of Route 66. His writing addressed the history of these areas, the buildings, and the people native to it. He even sometimes included historical Harley-Davidson dealership information.

Harrington also expressed some of the same feelings of Enthusiast readers who felt the urge to hit the road, relatable in his desire to make time and his enthusiasm for riding and completing adventures. Like so many, he enjoyed the attention his Harley-Davidson motorcycles garnered, the people he met while riding, and the power he felt piloting the machine. Not just a scientist, and an author, and a rider, he was a photographer for local motorcycle club events, too.

“Most of us spend so much time making a living that we cannot take time out to live. I decided to take a couple of weeks off from the making of a living to go out and ‘live it up,’” he wrote in February 1959.

“I would yet complete that Pony Express run—it would be in two separate jaunts, several years apart and on two different Harley-Davidsons, but complete it I would!” he wrote in his last adventure published in The Enthusiast in 1964.

“I had my first ride more than 40 years ago, and for years I dreamed of owning my own cycle. I am now over 60 and own my sixth motorcycle. All I regret is that I waited so long to get the first one,” he wrote in an 1964 Enthusiast piece titled “Why Ride a Motorcycle.”

Two of Harrington’s photographs and stories earned the front cover of The Enthusiast. The March 1956 issue included “Adventures of Geologist” documenting Harrington’s first long motorcycle trip in several years, following a surgery. “I was trying out a number of things: a home-made Geiger counter, a newly acquired Harley-Davidson 74, the goose down insulated winter clothing furnished me by Eddie Bauer of Seattle,” he wrote.

“Adventures of a Geologist” is especially notable because, of all the stories submitted by Harrington, some of the photographs from this issue are the only ones that remain in the H-D archives today. It was the search for early Hydra-Glide photographs that lead the archives to discover the photos of this story, inexplicably stored amidst the company’s ‘racing collection’ photographs. It’s these printed photographs that appear among copies of The Enthusiast in the images for this post.

The photos were digitized, and the team set to finding out more about where and who they came from. Admiration for Harrington grew easily, not only for his prolific writing and relatability, but the sense that he was, to put it simply, a good person: Widely known in the Southwest and in multiple fields of science, he was foremost a stalwart of the Albuquerque school systems known for providing free tutoring and connecting with students so genuinely that they willing joined him in science-based excursions well before dawn and on weekends. He even earned some education related recognition in Time Magazine after speaking at a conference in 1955. Harrington retired in 1976 after 46 years of teaching in Albuquerque. He died four years later in June of 1980 at the age of 78. Writeups about Harrington estimate he taught more than 10,000 Albuquerque students. Like many of his former students have commented on websites, in newsletters and other sources, his Albuquerque Tribune obituary also made sure to note that Harrington “prowled the backroads of New Mexico and the highways of America aboard a motorcycle.” 

After researching the extent of his presence in the collection, the archives’ purchased a secondhand copy of one of Harrington’s books: An Engineer Writes About People and Places and Projects featured a cartoon-like illustration of him aboard a motorcycle on both the dustjacket and imprinted on the cloth book cover. Inside, Harrington had written a note to a friend before signing his name; a personalized crest for Harrington features important symbols of his life—“his many interests and fields of honor”—including the “that ever-present, long-remembered motorcycle.”