It’s impossible to sing the praises of Wheels Through Time enough. It’s a first-class operation. Dale’s reverence for each and every item in his building shines through. He’s spent decades of his life curating, rebuilding and restoring bikes. He travels the country promoting Wheels Through Time, displaying and racing and enthusiastically educating the public. His son Matt plays an active role in the museum’s operations, including maintaining the website and assisting in the production of WTT’s extensive archives of videos. They also have a popular Facebook page, which has, at last count, 4,150 friends, many of them visitors of the museum who stop by to thank Dale for an amazing experience. The page features something called “Who’s Visited Wheels Through Time?,” hundreds of photos of license plates from all fifty states (and a few from other countries), metal mementos of cyclists who’ve stopped in.

Dale Walksler was a Harley dealer in Illinois for 24 years, but his passion had always been acquiring and rebuilding antique motorcycles. “I’ve been avidly collecting and restoring rare American cycles for over 43 years,” Dale said. Eventually, his hobby grew into a full time job. “I decided to shift gears, so to speak.” He sold his dealership and opened a motorcycle museum in the small, southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon. In 1990, he officially named the place Wheels Through Time. Dale dreams big, and it wasn’t long before he outgrew his space. He wanted to expand and relocate to a more biker friendly locale. “In doing my diligence and evaluating where in this country the museum would work, I looked at the mountain region of North Carolina because it had the potential to generate a huge amount of motorcycle trade. He decided on scenic Maggie Valley, and in 2002 he moved there and reopened Wheels Through Time.

Maggie Valley is a 1.6 square mile patch of land nestled deep within the misty, scenic Smoky Mountains. It’s a quaint and lovely place, not far from the historic Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s inhabited by 973 adults and 177 kids. The 2010 Census reports that there are 551 occupied housing units, and according to the Yellow Pages, there are twenty-five hotels and 23 restaurants, give or take. At one time, the big draw in Maggie Valley was The Ghost Town in the Sky Amusement Park, but it closed in 2010. When you ride into town, you’ll see it sitting there, the big sad “Ghost Town” sign ironically advertising a huge, abandoned tourist stop.

Among the remaining attractions in Maggie Valley are a golf resort, a ski area, a theme park called Santa’s Land, and, for you Riverdance fans, there’s the Stompin Ground Clogging Hall of Fame. For those who prefer motorcycle clubs over golf clubs, and are more familiar with clogged carburetors than clogged shoes, there’s Wheels Through Time, a truly remarkable museum, which bills itself as being home “to the world’s premier collection of rare American vintage motorcycles.”

It’s more than that though. In addition to over 300 mint condition cycles dating back to 1903, the museum is home to antique cars, vintage lawn mowers, unique displays of parts and pieces and historic cycle memorabilia, all made in the US. It’s a place full of shining chrome, gleaming paint and old logos from motorcycle manufacturers whose names would be forgotten if it weren’t for Dale Walksler’s efforts. And get this—everything runs. Dale even races some of them, including a yearly pilgrimage to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, where he and his 1903 Indian compete in the annual Century Race.

For Dale, operating Wheels Through Time isn’t just a profession- it’s an obsession. He and son Matt live on the premises. They constantly field phone calls from people with leads on unique antique bikes, and Dale goes on hunting expeditions for new acquisitions. He credits the Antique Motorcycle Club of America (AMCA) for a lot of his vintage bike finds. “That group has been around for about fifty, sixty years,” Dale said. At AMCA swap meets, that’s where you find the stuff.” He gets many calls about old bikes that people think he might be interested in, but, he explains, “I’m really only interested in rare pieces of history.” Donations to the museum are few and far between, and Dale says that he usually gets his bikes through “horse trading. I’ve bought quite a few bikes, and I build a lot of bikes, and I bring a lot of bikes back to life. I find a skeleton and make it a bike.”

The museum is run on a tight budget, and Dale said that by living there, he and Matt don’t have the usual dual expense of running both a business and a home. He also says that he really doesn’t have any employees. “I guess you might say that we have friends and associates. There are actually only five people that are here for daily operations,” said Dale. “I’m the mechanic. When the bell rings at 5:00 and this place closes, I’m in the shop until midnight, and I have been for forty years.” Describing what he does during those late nights, Dale said, “I build, restore, maintain and preserve.” Dale isn’t just preserving motorcycle Americana in the museum. He has an impressive website (http://www.wheelsthroughtime.com), which features over 325 videos on subjects such as motorcycle history, vintage bike events and restoration. Producing the videos is just another way that Dale and Matt are working to honor the early pioneers of the cycle industry, as well as educating the public about some of the finer points of bike building. As Dale proudly stated, “There’s no other website in the world where you can see the world’s oldest Harley racing against the world’s oldest Indian.” Actually, Dale gave me permission to link to the video, which you can view above.

I recently visited Wheels Through Time, and spent a good two-and-a-half hours in a state of awe. From the moment you pull into the parking lot, you begin seeing these wonderful bits of motorized pieces of history. Walking into the lobby, you start getting really excited, because you’re greeted by gleaming bikes, beaming associates and intriguing displays of memorabilia. Once inside the two-story structure, visitors are held captive by the sheer numbers of incredible bikes and the little signs that tell their stories. Dale cranked the engine of the 1903 Indian I was enthralled with, and it purred like a happy cat. Other than that sound, the entire place was filled with a stunned sort of silence and serenity. We motorcycle gazers were just knocked mute by the splendor of it all.

You’d think that the success of Wheels Through Time would make Dale Walksler very happy. You’d think that it would make the town of Maggie Valley happy. Unfortunately, these days, neither is the case. In fact, on October 31 of this year, the museum will be closing its doors and moving elsewhere.

Next: Dale Walksler Bids Bye Bye to Maggie Valley