On Saturday, the National Motorcycle Museum announced it will be closing its doors for good on Sept. 5. If you haven’t been there yet, I can assure you from personal experience that it’s worth it to make the trip there this summer.
Visiting the museum – which is located in Anamosa, Iowa, and was established by J&P Cycle founder John Parham – was something that’d been on my list of places to visit for years. Each year, something would come up that caused me to postpone my visit. Last year, I finally made it there on assignment for RevZilla’s Common Tread – and was impressed with what I saw.
For those unfamiliar with the National Motorcycle Museum, it relocated to its current home – an about 36,500 sq. ft. former Wal-Mart – in 2010 after being founded in 1989.
The museum’s exhibit hall featured hundreds of motorcycles – the museum claims to be home to about 500 bikes – including a variety of machines from domestic and international brands when I visited it in 2022. The exhibit is organized into more than two dozen areas that cover on-road, off-road, recreational and competitive riding.
Perhaps even more impressive that the museum’s motorcycle assortment are the numerous pieces of memorabilia that adorn its walls.
This may be the first time you’ve heard of Anamosa, which is situated in east-central Iowa about 60 miles northwest of Davenport, Iowa. There is lodging available in Anamosa, as well as in nearby Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and farther away – but closer to Interstate 80 – in Davenport and Iowa City. One option is to stay on the north side of Davenport and visit the sprawling Iowa 80 Truck Stop campus and its trucking museum as part of your trip.
Though you can probably spend as little as an hour or two taking in the exhibit, I encourage you to take you time going through the hall. There’s a lot to see in a small space, and it can be easy to overlook a bike or piece of memorabilia that really hits home.
