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| (Des Moines Register. June 23, 1918) |
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| (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.
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| (The Des Moines Register. July 2, 1916) |
A scene at the Boone race track. A. Striergel is driving a Stafford car, with a Duesenberg close behind.
Track manage, Joe Lowrey, said he had fourteen drivers signed up for the season, and was expecting several more to join in. Prizes were $1100 and $750 for one event alone.
The track has been in operation since 1910, and several dirt track records had been set there.
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| (Omaha Daily Bee. August 21, 1904) |
Barney Oldfield didn’t just race cars. He
scared the hell out of people with them.
In
the early 1900s, most Americans were getting used to automobiles. Oldfield was
tearing around dirt tracks at speeds that seemed insane.
His
daredevil antics made him America’s first racing superstar. Crowds came just to
see what he’d do next—and maybe to see whether he’d survive another day at the
track.
In
1904, Oldfield became a spokesperson for Peerless, a Cleveland automobile
maker. His racing machine, the Green Dragon, was a stripped-down monster built
for speed.
And
Oldfield knew how to sell a show.
He
raced at fairgrounds and horse tracks, challenging other drivers. Chasing speed
records. Newspapers followed him everywhere. Peerless quickly figured out that
having the country’s most famous driver behind the wheel was pretty good
advertising.
That’s
exactly what this ad was selling.
It
promised spectators a chance to see a Peerless driven by “the world’s most
fearless driver—Barney Oldfield.” You weren’t just going to see a car race. You
were going to see Barney Oldfield.
The
Green Dragon made Peerless famous. And Barney Oldfield made automobile racing a
spectacle Americans couldn’t stop watching.
This
advertisement was published in Omaha, but targeted at Iowa and Nebraska
drivers. It sold cars. Lots of them.
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| (Des Moines Register. June 16, 1901) |
W. J. Riddell picked a hell of a time to get
into the automobile business.
In 1900, he was selling bicycles at Eighth and
Locust in Des Moines. His shop carried Cleveland and Crescent bicycles. A good
one cost around $30. Riddell advertised his place as the “Oldest and Largest
Exclusive Bicycle Store in the City.”
It was a solid business. People knew what bicycles
were. They knew how they worked and where they could ride them.
Then along came the automobile.
The early cars were loud, expensive, and
unreliable. Iowa had few decent roads. Gasoline could be difficult to find.
Mechanics who knew what they were doing were even harder to find. A horse could
usually get you home. An automobile might leave you sitting in the mud.
Riddell wanted in.
In 1903, the Des Moines city directory listed him
under both bicycles and automobiles. Soon the bicycle dealer at Eighth and
Locust was running the Riddell Automobile Co.
(Denison Review. May 19, 1915)
The first time America built a road across the country, Iowa nearly swallowed it whole.
Cars got buried in mud. Bridges collapsed. Drivers
slept beside the road. Men with horses and shovels fought rain, dust, heat, and
freezing weather to carve a highway through the middle of Iowa. Some never made
it home.
Today, you can fly across Iowa on Interstate 80
without thinking twice. Air conditioning blasting. Cruise control on. Coffee in
the cupholder.
The Lincoln Highway opened in 1913. The idea
sounded ridiculous at the time — one road running across the country from New
York to California. Most Americans had never traveled farther than the next
town over. Many Iowa farmers still trusted horses more than automobiles.
When the highway opened, people started talking
about driving across the country.
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| (Des Moines Register. July 15, 1906) |
The first automobile in Des Moines landed in W.
W. Sears’ lap, almost by mistake.
Debeltrand Grocery meant to raffle it off. Then
they went broke.
Sears grabbed the car and drove it to the
fairgrounds. Bad idea—if he wanted to stay unnoticed. Every stop turned into a
crowd. People swarmed it. Stared. Asked questions. Couldn’t believe it moved
without horses.
He cruised the streets daily, drawing bigger
crowds each time.
Not long after that, J.O. Wells, W.E. Hamilton,
Webster Bishop, and a handful of others jumped in and formed the Des Moines
Automobile Club. Thirteen members. Most didn’t own a car yet—but they planned
on getting one.
The club didn’t last a year, but that didn’t
matter. The automobile wasn’t going anywhere.
(Unfortunately,
the paper didn’t give a date on when
Sears acquired the automobile. My best guess would be 1900. The paper noted
several claims against the company for unpaid debts)
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| The Davenport Democrat and Leader. February 5, 1911. |
Here's another great advertisement featuring early automobiles from 1911. Do you think every car they built was a convertible? or did they just look good in the ad?
Klemme Auto Company was located on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa, and carried Buick and Oldsmobile vehicles.
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| The Daily Times. May 31, 1917. |
And you can be sure the cars were hand-crafted. They produced just fifteen cars a day. That's 450 cars a month if they worked seven days a week, or roughly 5,000 cars per year.
This advertisement for the Velie Motor Vehicle Co., Moline, Illinois, was published in The Daily Times on February 24, 1912.
If you lived in Davenport in 1905, the Oldsmobile Touring Car might have been the automobile for you. This advertisement for Mason's Carriage Works was published in The Daily Times on April 8, 1905.
Iowa residents had a large assortment of automobiles to choose from in 1909. Like today, you could select a gas or electric model, and in some cases steam driven.
Here are two advertisements from Des Moines Automobile dealers taken from the Des Moines Register. November 28, 1909.
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| Thomas Flyer - Model H, sold by Moyer Auto Co, |
