10-01-2026 7:20pm

The Little Dayton Demon

Beth Callahan Editor

Courtesy of Misti Spillman, Manager, Preservation and Community Outreach Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum. Living here in Warren County, we are fortunate to be between the two larger cities of Dayton and Cincinnati. This allows us to not only share in both of these city's accomplishments, but in their residents. And, believe it or not, one way of learning about these people can often be found in historical cemeteries. Dayton, Ohio's Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, which is one of the oldest garden cemeteries in the United States, is filled with history. And, this October the WarrenCountyPost.com has been given the privilege to publish a piece from Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum about Earl Herbert Kiser “The Little Dayton Demon.”

One day, when Earl Kiser was a small boy, his father brought a glamorous toy home from town. With one large wheel in front and one little wheel behind, this newfangled contraption was Kiser’s first bicycle.

Without a helmet or training wheels, young Earl’s repeated collisions with the lilac bush brought his mother no small sense of anxiety.

“He’ll never learn to ride that thing,” she told her husband, “and besides, he’ll break his neck if he keeps on trying.” But Earl insisted, and his father agreed, that he should be given ‘one more chance’—until Earl finally mastered the bike.

On September 15, 1893, Kiser was awarded a gold medal by the Darke County Agricultural Society. Throughout the 1890s, Kiser competed in bicycle races in many cities. Racing for the Dayton Bicycle Club and later Stearns’ “Yellow-Fellow Team,” Earl Kiser held the ½ mile and the one mile world record, and competed in the 1900 World Championship in Paris.

In reference to his short, muscular physique and ability to secure exciting, come-from-behind victories on the track, Earl became known as “the Little Dayton Demon” in the pages of newspapers & magazines. Sometime around 1900, Kiser announced that he would retire from cycle racing. But, it wasn’t long before his need for speed saw the ‘Pocket Hercules’ back on the track, with a little more horsepower this time.

This unassuming Daytonian went on to defeat such racing greats as Barney Oldfield, Fred Loughhead of Canada and C.S. Mertens of Holland.

The car that made Earl famous was built by Alexander Winton, who called it the Winton Bullet No.2, now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.

On an old dirt racetrack, Earl Kiser established a new world record for fastest mile—reaching a then-dizzying speed of 68 miles an hour.

However, disaster loomed....barely a year later, everything would change for Earl Kiser on a Cleveland racetrack August 12, 1905. The loss of his leg marked the end of Earl’s racing career.

Once recovered, Kiser became an auto dealer with a shop on East Second Street and acted as a salesman for various auto accessory agencies.

Sometime in the mid 1920’s, Kiser & his wife relocated to Miami Beach, Florida. Kiser found work in real estate development and became the owner of the Nautilus Hotel.

Earl Kiser died in 1936 at the age of 60 and was returned to Dayton for burial in the family plot in section 101, lot 2487 at Woodland Cemetery (rejoining his left leg, just as he'd asked).