Honoring the history of the Indiana State Fairgrounds one-mile track

On June 20, 1903, on the one-mile Indiana State Fairgrounds dirt track, Berna Eli “Barney” Oldfield became the first driver to run a one-mile track in one-minute flat, or 60 miles per hour (MPH).  The Indiana State Fair Board eager to support the automobile craze allowed the first automobile race on the dirt track in November 1905 staged by the Indianapolis Automobile Racing Association.  Races on the Fairgrounds also occurred on Decoration Day 1906 and in September 1908.  

In 1917, a pair of racing greats, Oldfield and 1915 Indianapolis 500-mile race winner Ralph DePalma held match race for the World’s Track Championship on the Fairgrounds track. Oldfield “the master driver of the world” raced his famed Golden Submarine while DePalma “the idol of the speedways” drove the 12-cylinder Packard “White Twin Six.”

One of the most important series of auto racing events held on the Fairground’s oval track was ‘The Gold and Glory Sweepstakes,’ a race organized by the African-American community from 1924 to 1936. The Sweepstakes was a 100-mile race with a grand prize of $2,500 which drew an estimated 10,000 spectators. Indianapolis native Charlie Wiggins earned the nickname the "Speed King" for winning the ‘Gold and Glory Sweepstakes’ four times.

After the American Automobile Association (AAA) championship cars first ran on the big oval in 1946 for the ‘Indianapolis 100’ before the annual ‘Hoosier Hundred’ began in 1953, a tradition which continues until today.

Long-time Hoosier Hundred promoter 

Tom Johnson addressed the gathering

Tom Johnson and IRMA chairman Brian Hasler unveil the marker 

On May 24, 2018, nearly 115 years after Barney Oldfield's record run, the Indiana Racing Memorial Association (IRMA) a group dedicated to memorializing the people, places and events historically associated with Indiana motorsports, led by Chairman Brian Hasler, dedicated a permanent marker outside the first turn on the Fairgrounds mile in the afternoon prior to the 63^rd running of The Hoosier Hundred.  

The plaque honors Barney Oldfield’s First Minute Mile, 

The Gold & Glory Sweepstakes and The Hoosier Hundred.

All photos by the author 

1934 Charlie Allen midget

While passing through the Indianapolis International Airport for the 2018 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show, the author spied this 1934 Charlie Allen midget race car on display. 

Owned by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, this car was built by Los Angeles race car builder Clyde Adams, who got his start along with fellow car builder/metalworker Myron Stevens working for Harry A. Miller. After Miller sold out to the Schofield Company and the company went into decline, Adams and Steven left to start their own race car shop.  

The first documented midget car race took place on June 4, 1933 at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, California, and less than a year later, Adams built this car for car owner/driver Charlie Allen, powered by a 2-stroke 4-cylinder ELTO engine.

Outboard motor pioneer Ole Evinrude sold his eponymous company in 1913 to care for his ill wife with one of the terms of the sale that he could not enter the outboard motor business for five years. 

Ole kept experimenting and developed a lighter more powerful two-cylinder outboard motor and in 1921 he founded a new company to sell his invention. Ole couldn’t use his name for the new company so he called it ELTO, which stood for “Evinrude Light Twin Outboard."

During the early nineteen thirties ELTO marketed two two-cycle engines to the midget auto racing community; the ELTO 4-60 (as in this car) comprised of four cylinders with a single rotary valve that displaced 59.4 cubic inches that produced 60 horsepower, lot of power in its day. For lubricant, racers added castor oil to a mix of methanol (wood alcohol) and benzene which created the signature trail of smoke associated with ELTO engines.

In 1939, Charlie Allen continued his ground-breaking ways, as he purchased the first Frank Kurtis-built midget which was equipped with a four-cylinder Offenhauser engine.  

Photos by the author