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Local Harley-Davidson museum closes
Harley-Davidson motorcycles of the 1960's are of the many bikes that were showcased at Charlie's Harley-Davidson museum in Huntington.
Purchase this photoHUNTINGTON -- A downtown motorcycle museum that drew ZZ Top, Billy Joel and even Willie G. Davidson is gone.
The 10,000-square-foot Harley-Davidson museum at Charlie's Harley-Davidson, 408 4th St., Huntington, has been closed and will be remodeled to expand the Harley dealership's service area.
Lynn Rist, spokeswoman for Charlie's Harley-Davidson, said Thursday that the museum was closed earlier this summer and that the museum building next to the dealership has now been cleared out.
The nearly 70 mostly antique motorcycles in the museum, as well as the custom display cases, Harley-themed original art and memorabilia, all belong to the dealership's original owner and founder, Benjy Steele.
Some of those bikes and memorabilia inside the museum, which opened in 1999, included: two of Evel Knievel's motorcycles, a 1928 riding uniform of thrill-seeker Gordon Chain and an "Easy Rider" movie poster signed by Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.
A former history teacher and lifelong motorcycle buff who started the dealership from scratch in 1987, Steele sold the dealership in February 2007 to Bluefield motorcycle dealers Charlie Cole and Joe Saunders.
Cole, who has control of the dealership, owns three other Harley-Davidson dealerships and opened his first store, Cole Harley-Davidson in Bluefield, in 1998. He bought two more dealerships in Virginia before buying Benjy's.
According to Rick McKnight, one of the managers at Charlie's, Steele was leasing the museum to Charlie's and the store decided they were spending too much for housing the museum, which did not charge an entrance fee.
"It's a two-edged sword," Rist said of the closing. "We'll miss the museum and all of the antique bikes but this will allow us to create a more spacious service center for more techs."
Rist said currently plans are to remodel the museum building, which will be more spacious and allow the service department better access instead of coming off the 41/2 alley.
Although nothing is set in stone, Rist said she believes the current service area will be used for more storage space.
"We had to do something with the service department to have more room and this truly seemed like the most logical place," Rist said.
In spite of the change, Rist said everything else at the dealership is fine, and that a summer of high gas prices has driven in a whole new clientele that's signing up in record numbers for Charlie's Riders Edge classes for beginners.
"With high gas prices a lot of people are looking at alternatives and one of those alternatives is traveling on two wheels where you can get anywhere from 45 to 55 miles to a gallon," Rist said. "We've got more people coming in and have seen a big difference in the Rider's Edge interest and people wanting to learn to ride. I think that all goes back to gas."
