SPRINGVILLE — Rick Salisbury fell in love with motorcycles when he was about 12 years old. After he started his career as a homebuilder, he bought his first bike, a 1979 Harley road bike, and then a Harley Sportster, and his extensive and unique motorcycle collection took off from there.
As he started collecting vintage bikes, he soon realized he was running out of space.
“I had all these bikes,” Salisbury said. “They were in my barn at home, my garage, my office, a storage shed, and nobody could really enjoy them, and I couldn’t enjoy them either because I couldn’t get where I could see them. I just wanted them all in one area.”
In 1999, his solution was to buy an old general store in Springville and turn it into a display for his growing collection of vintage motorcycles. This way, both he and anybody else who wanted to could see the bikes.
He decided to call it Legends Motorcycle Emporium because he felt that each bike was a legend.
In 2014, he moved his collection to its current location, which is also in Springville. Before settling in, he remodeled the building. With its concrete floors, rustic pipes and trusses visible in the ceilings, he wanted to make it feel like it was built at the same time as the antique bikes.
“I’d just like (customers) to go back in time (to) when life was a little simpler and appreciate the workmanship that was done,” Salisbury said. “Everything that we have in here, all the workmanship was done by hand. They really didn’t have the machinery to build it, and it was all basically hand-built. That’s another thing I like about it.”
Salisbury says the last time he counted his collection, he had about 150 bikes, but he “lost count after that.”
Most of his collection is on display in the emporium, which is free to visitors. The top floor of the building is an art gallery with paintings and sculptures of motorcycles. While Salisbury collects bikes primarily at auctions, the art in the gallery is by artists he knows personally.
The oldest complete bike on display is a 1907 Harley-Davidson Strap Tank. As far as Salisbury knows, there are only three original Strap Tanks left, and the one he owns is in the best condition.
“It’s just a rare piece of motorcycle history,” Salisbury said. “It’s all original, it’s all there, original tires, original belt. It hasn’t been changed since the day it was made.”
Most of the antique bikes are still in riding condition. Salisbury is working on repairing the ones that aren’t.
“I’m not going to restore them,” Salisbury said. “I’m just going to leave them in the condition when I got them, so they will all be vintage bikes, just the way they were left.”
When looking to buy new bikes, he prefers to buy antique, unrestored bikes. He considers them true works of art and does his best to leave them just the way they are.
“I just don’t want to take that time patina off of them to make them look new when they’re not new. I want to leave them how they were left,” Salisbury said. “There are some bikes that I’ll have to restore because they are so damaged. All the bikes that I find complete with the parts on them, we won’t mess with them.”
When a bike needs restoring, the process can take anywhere from a year to five years to complete. It’s all about finding the right parts, and sometimes Salisbury has to create the parts on his own because they have been discontinued.
Although it’s an expensive and time-consuming hobby, Salisbury has no intention to stop collecting now. His passions lie mostly in vintage motorcycles, he said, but he does custom work on modern motorcycles as well.
In addition to the motorcycles and art displays, Legends Motorcycle Emporium features a store and a cafe. Salisbury said he wanted to create a place where people could “sit down and just stay a little bit longer, have lunch and just enjoy it.
“It is comfortable in here,” he added. “I just didn’t want people to be in a hurry when they came in here. Just take your time and enjoy it because that is what I do when I’m in here.”
More information and a virtual online tour are available at legendsmotorcycles.com.
If you go ...
What: Legends Motorcycle Emporium
When: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: 1715 W. 500 South, Springville
Phone: 801-489-0889
Email: mswensen@deseretnews.com