Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/861665
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I t seemed you couldn't thumb through an issue of Cycle News in the 1970s without seeing a headline featuring J.N. Roberts. Roberts was so dominant in desert motorcycle racing events that he became known as that era's King of the Desert. Just check out on YouTube the part of the documentary movie "On Any Sunday" that features Rob- erts flying across the desert on his beloved Husqvarna. Roberts and his Husky are in perfect harmony as he dances the bike across the high desert of Southern California avoiding rocks, ruts and big clumps of grease- wood bushes. Roberts won just about all the major desert cross-country races of the 1960s and '70s including Barstow-to-Vegas four consecu- tive times (1968 to 1971). He also won the Mint 400 three times and the Baja 500 and the Baja 1000 twice each. He teamed with Mal- colm Smith to win the motorcycle division in the 1967 Mexican 1000, later to be known as the Baja 1000. Roberts also represented the United States at the 1971 and 1972 International Six Days Trial. You would think a rider who attained Roberts' level of skill on a motorcycle would have started rid- ing bikes as a kid, but that wasn't the case for J.N. (which stands for James Nelson, by the way). Rob- erts grew up in southern Indiana. "We were right on the border," he said. "Step a foot in the river and you were in Kentucky." He only occasionally had the opportunity to ride a motorcycle around the back of a BSA motorcycle shop in Evansville where his cousin worked. "We'd go down to the shop and they had a little track in the back and we'd beat around on a little 200, no helmet and that kind of thing," Roberts explained. "Back in those days nobody had any money for one thing. We were poor. Plus, there were no dirt bikes really. You had to buy something and convert it." It wasn't until Roberts came out of the Marines after four years and moved to California, that he began riding motor- cycles on a regular basis. It was an unusual path to racing. "I got a ticket," Roberts grins when asked how he got into racing. "I already had the idea I wanted to ride in the dirt and I had a Honda 250 Scrambler and had taken the lights off it to make it better to ride in the dirt. I got a ticket and hauled into court and I had to promise the judge I wouldn't ride the bike on the street anymore and I didn't. I don't think I ever rode on the street again until I got in the movie business and had to ride a Harley from point A to point B or something." Roberts began riding at a gravel pit they called the Branford Wash, where he met Bob Harris and Tom Ryder who were both desert racers. They talked Roberts into racing in his first event, a popular Southern California off-road race called the Moose Run in February of 1965. "I got lost and all screwed King of the Desert P144 J.N. was not only a fixture in the California desert but also in the pages of Cycle News.