CN III ARCHIVES
P122
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
MAN OF STEELE
O
rie Steele was the leading AMA Hillclimb
Champion of the 1920s and early '30s, at a
time when the sport was at its zenith of popularity.
Steele rode as a factory Indian rider for much of
his career and was one of the best-known riders
of his era. Such was Steele's popularity that Indian produced an "Orie Steele Special" hillclimb
machine in the late 1920s, which it allowed factory riders to race in special hillclimb events.
Steele was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey,
on March 20, 1887 and his father, John Steele,
was a motorcycle dealer in Paterson, New
Jersey. The first records of Orie (sometimes
spelled Orrie) participating in sanctioned
competition came in 1913 where he won
the prestigious endurance race held annually by the Crotona (N.Y.) Motorcycle Club.
He came back and won the event again
in 1918. Steele earned victories in several
major endurance runs in and around New
York and New Jersey in the 1910s and early
1920s, including a 500-mile endurance run out of
Yonkers, New York.
Steele, who lived in Paterson, began contesting
hillclimb events in the mid-1910s, and by the early
1920s he became a hillclimb specialist and rapidly
became one of the burgeoning sport's first national
stars.
In 1922, Steele won his first M&ATA (the predecessor to the AMA) National Hillclimb Championship at the National meet in a burg on the outskirts
of Rochester called Egypt, New York. The hillclimb
was the biggest of its day and featured racers from
across the country, including well known stars
such as Denver, Colorado's Floyd Clymer, HarleyDavidson's Oscar Lenz from Michigan, Reggie
Pink on a Reading-Standard and Excelsior's ace,
Paul Anderson, from Chicago. That victory thrust
Steele into the national limelight. Indian heavily
advertised Steele's accomplishments and he be-
came a factory rider for the Springfield, Massachusetts manufacturer.
A newspaper account of the 1922 meet said
that Indian enthusiasts surrounded their hero,
Steele, and carried him to the pits where partisans and fellow competitors alike offered him
hearty congratulations.
While other forms of motorcycle competition
declined generally, due to the lack of factory
support, hillclimb events became more popular during the 1920s. As the sport grew and the
hillclimbing bikes became more powerful, the
hills the competitors tackled became larger and
steeper. Slopes of 45 degrees or more were often selected, sometimes being unclimbable even
with specialized machines powered by racing en-
