 |
| (Des Moines Register. June 22, 1916) |
This is the start of a history of early dirt
track racing in Iowa. It’s rough, incomplete, but it gives some good
information on the dirt track in Boone.
It contains the scoop on three races. One in 1910,
and two in 1916. The purses in 1916 were huge for the time. As much as $35,000
in today’s dollars.
There were other tracks at the Des Moines
fairgrounds and in Sioux City. I hope to have more on them later. If you have
info to share, please leave it in the comments.
Dirt
track racing in Boone goes back to at least 1910.
The place was North Side Driving
Park, near what is now 22nd and Linn streets. It was a half-mile dirt oval
connected to the Boone Driving Park and Fair Association. Horses and harness
racers used the grounds before automobiles came along. Like a lot of fairground
tracks in those days, it didn’t take long before somebody decided to see how
fast a car could get around it.
By the summer of 1910, they were
racing for real.
And people showed up.
The Evening Times-Republican reported
on August 10, 1910, that around 10,000 spectators had watched automobile and
motorcycle races in Boone the previous afternoon. Boone itself had only a
little over 10,000 people.
The racing wasn’t particularly safe.
Four accidents were reported that
afternoon. One car went through a fence. McMillen, driving a Parry, clipped
another section of fence and lost a wheel. Motorcycle rider F. R. Jenkins went
through the fence, too. Somehow, he walked away without serious injury.
Nobody seemed particularly surprised.
That was racing in 1910.
The results show this wasn’t just a
few local guys putting on an automobile exhibition.
A Mason won the five-mile
free-for-all in 6 minutes 13 seconds. Jenkins won a 15-mile motorcycle race on
an Excelsior. W. J. Sutcliffe took a 10-mile event in a Maytag. Another 10-mile
race went to a Mason, while Harry Knight drove a Westcott to victories in a high-powered
10-mile race and the 10-mile free-for-all.
Mason, Maytag, Westcott, Parry and
Excelsior aren’t names most people connect with racing today. In 1910, the
automobile industry was still young. Cars were crude, roads were bad, and
racing was one of the quickest ways manufacturers and drivers could prove what
their machines could do.
 |
| A 1916 race at the Boone track. (The Des Moines Register. July 2, 1916) |
Boone had a place to do it.
Six years later, the old dirt track
was still drawing racers and crowds.
In May 1916, the Des Moines
Register reported plans for a big Fourth of July automobile meet. The
Boone Driving Park and Fair Association had leased the grounds to Joe Lowrey of
Nevada, Iowa.
Lowrey took over management and
started promising something Boone hadn’t seen before. He wanted drivers with
national reputations and a racing program that could compete with much bigger
cities.
He wasn’t thinking small.
A June advertisement called the Boone
oval the “fastest dirt track in the west” and said it had been the “scene of
auto racing since 1910.”
That might sound like advertising
hype. The 1910 newspaper account shows it wasn’t.
Lowrey put up $1,100 in cash prizes,
serious money in 1916. The program included 10-mile races for stripped cars,
another for fully equipped automobiles, time trials, a slow-car race, and a
free-for-all.
The cars coming to Boone were just as
interesting.
R. L. Parker of Des Moines entered a
Duesenberg. Sig Haugdahl was listed in a Mercer. Phil Schafer had a Chevrolet.
George Tiederick brought a Buick and Chet Koons a Ford Special. Ralph E.
Harrison of Boone entered a Potter’s Special. Harvey Jones of Toledo was listed
with a Warren Special.
(Evening-Times Republican. August 10, 1910)
And the list kept growing.
By July 2, the Register said
Lowrey had 14 drivers signed and expected more.
For two weeks, workers had been
getting the track ready. The grandstand was remodeled. More bleachers went up.
Of the $1,100 purse, the newspaper said $750 was set aside for one event alone.
The Register ran a
photograph with that July 2 story. The picture had been taken at the Boone
races the year before.
Albert Striegel is out front in a
Stafford. A Duesenberg is right behind him. Several more cars disappear into
the dust. Spectators are packed along a wooden fence only a short distance from
the racing surface.
There are no roll cages. No fire
suits. No concrete walls or catch fences. The drivers sit high and exposed,
bouncing across the dirt on skinny tires.
That was the deal.
The July 4, 1916 race brought still
more serious racers to Boone.
Johnny Raimey and Louis LeCocq had
been expected at a major racing program in Wichita, Kansas. Instead, they came
to Boone. A later Register article, published on August 16,
identified Raimey as the winner of the July Fourth race.
Lowrey apparently liked what he saw.
Six weeks later, he did it again.
Advertisements announced Interstate
Auto Races at North Side Driving Park for August 15 and 16. This time Boone was
getting two straight days of racing, with five events each day.
The advertisement leaned on the
track’s history: “Since 1910 thrilling auto races have been staged,” with some
of the country’s most daring dirt-track drivers taking part.
(Des Moines Register. May 11, 1916)
The entry list included Duesenbergs, Buicks, Chevrolets, Ford Specials, and other purpose-built or modified racing cars. The advertisement bragged that the July Fourth meet had produced some of the most sensational racing Boone had ever seen.
It is easy to lose sight of what all
of this means.
This wasn’t a couple of local men
pulling the fenders off their cars and racing around an old horse track. Boone
was part of a wider racing circuit.
Duesenbergs raced there. Striegel
brought his Stafford. Haugdahl, who would become one of the biggest names in
dirt-track racing, was there. Raimey and LeCocq came to town. Drivers from Des
Moines, Chicago, and communities across the Midwest were showing up with cars
built to race.
There was money behind it, too.
Lowrey was putting up purses,
rebuilding spectator areas and preparing the track. Advertisements told people
they could reach Boone by interurban, Northwestern, and Milwaukee trains. Good
roads led into town from every direction, promoters said. The Boone Concert
Band was booked for the Fourth of July program.
This was racing, but it was also
entertainment. A big race could fill the grandstand, bring thousands of people
into town and turn an afternoon at the old driving park into an event.
Most of that history has been
swallowed up by time.
Today, Boone racing is associated
with Boone Speedway and the IMCA Super Nationals. That track has a long history
of its own.
But it wasn’t the beginning.
More than half a century before the
modern Boone Speedway opened, cars were already banging wheels and crashing
through fences on a half-mile dirt track on the north side of town.
 |
| (Des Moines Register. August 13, 1916) |
The newspaper record puts automobile and motorcycle racing there on August 9, 1910. Around 10,000 people supposedly watched that day’s races. Five years later, Striegel’s Stafford was throwing dust in the face of a Duesenberg. By 1916, Lowrey was offering big purses and bringing some of the better dirt-track racers in the Midwest to Boone.
There are still holes in the story.
We don’t know exactly when North Side
Driving Park was built, or how long horses had been racing there
before the first automobiles showed up. We don’t know yet when the last
automobile race was held or exactly what happened to the old oval.
Those pieces are still out there
somewhere. But this much is clear.
Boone didn’t discover dirt-track
racing in the 1960s.They were already doing it in 1910.
And judging from the crowds, the
money, and the number of cars going through the fence, they were taking it
pretty seriously.
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