Del Kuhn was one of the nation’s top off-road racers in the 1940s and ’50s.

Kuhn was born in Camp Douglas, Wis., in 1925. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he settled in the Los Angeles area, joined the Compton Roughriders Motorcycle Club and started riding in off-road club rides. He soon started racing, competing on an Army surplus 45-inch (750cc) Harley stripped down for off-road use.

The trend at the time favored 500cc single-cylinder British off-road bikes. Kuhn borrowed a rigid-frame Matchless to compete in the 1948 Greenhorn Enduro and won the two-day event. That victory earned him a sponsorship from British motorcycle importer Frank Cooper.

Kuhn rode a sponsored AJS against talented off-road riders such as Ernie May and Hall of Famers Aub LeBard, Max Bubeck and John McLaughlin.

Notably, he won the Greenhorn again in 1950 and 1951. Because the 1950 Greenhorn was awarded the AMA sanction for that year’s national enduro title, Kuhn’s victory also earned him the 1950 AMA National Enduro Championship.

That same year, Kuhn and LeBard helped scout a course on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California. The Catalina Grand Prix became one of the most popular races of the 1950s. In the inaugural race in 1951, Kuhn charged through the field to finish third behind Hall of Famers Walt Fulton and Chuck Minert in second.

Perhaps Kuhn’s most emotional victory came at the classic Big Bear Endurance Run in 1952. Kuhn lost a good friend in the race in the mid-1940s and won the Big Bear as a tribute to his fallen buddy.

In 1955, Kuhn gave up racing to focus on his work as a police officer. In his nine-year career, he became one of the country’s best-known off-road racers.

He was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2003.