The history of Alamo Downs the short-lived Texas pre-war midget racing venue

The history of Alamo Downs  

the short-lived Texas pre-war

midget auto racing venue

Wes Saegesser 

On September 1 1933, the State of Texas legalized pari-mutuel wagering on thoroughbred racing. Shortly thereafter,  businessman Raymond Russell built the Alamo Downs one-mile horse racing facility on Culebra Road northwest of downtown San Antonio.  Alamo Downs opened its first racing meet on April 23 1934 with 14,000 fans in attendance which included Texas Governor Miriam A. Ferguson.

Horse racing at Alamo Downs ended on September 24 1937 after the Texas legislature again outlawed pari-mutuel thoroughbred wagering after several scandals. There were still horses boarded and trained on the Alamo Downs property but the facility sat largely unused until late 1940.

Famed automobile racing promoters O.D Lavely and his son Ray, through their company,  Lavely Racing Promotions Enterprises, signed a five-year lease in August 1940 to present midget racing at Alamo Downs. Lavely Promotions built the 1/5-mile banked oiled clay dirt track which measured 40 feet wide through the corners and 30 feet wide on the straightaways in front of the existing grandstands.  

The track construction included an innovative 36-inch high outer crash wall and an inner “hub rail.” Rather than locate the pit area in the infield, officials located the work area for the race cars underneath the grandstands in the paddock area.   

The Texas Oklahoma Racing Association (TORA) which sanctioned the Alamo Downs races, also presented races at the 1/5-mile Fair Park Speedway on the grounds of the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas, the Lavely’s 1/5-mile Houston Speedbowl and the ¼-mile Gold Mine Race Bowl in Dallas. TORA race tracks included Jefferson-Davis Speedway in Fort Worth, the original dirt Pan-American Speedway in San Antonio and the Panhandle-South Plains Speedway in Lubbock. TORA also raced in Texas at the Reaser Park track in Victoria as well as the Lions Field Speedway, a track which the author has been unable to locate.   

Admission to the first midget race at Alamo Downs on Sunday afternoon October 6 cost race fans 40 cents plus tax with free parking. Due to the late season opening, many midget drivers from the Midwest came to San Antonio to race against that local drivers that included Al Slaughter, Dick Word and the one-armed wonder, Wes Saegesser.

Other Texas entries came from Doster ‘Doc’ Cossey (AJ Foyt’s first racing hero), the 1939 Texas midget racing champion Mel Wainwright and Elmer “Rabbit” Musick, the youngest of five racing brothers from the Dallas area - his brothers were named Ben, Morris, Lyn and Leland.

 Al Slaughter won the very first Alamo Downs race, the 2-lap helmet dash over Abilene’s Cleo Glaze who set quick time in time trials at 17.31 seconds. Dale Burt, Word and Wainwright each won one of the eight-lap heat races, and Cossey won the second 10-lap semi-main event from eighth starting position.

During that second semi-main race, Denver driver Warren Hamilton took what the San Antonio Light article described as “a spectacular spill” on the first lap after he tangled with the car of JD Parks and Hamilton's car rolled over into the infield.

Slaughter took the race lead into the first turn of the 25-lap feature pursued by ‘Doc’ Cossey. ‘Doc’ pressed Slaughter hard until his car fell out on the ninth lap with electrical trouble, and Slaughter easily won by a half a lap over Glaze.     

The following Sunday, October the 13^th, the 1/5-mile track was much faster.  Jim Ward set quick time at 16.75 seconds, for a new lap record, while ‘Doc’ Cossey won the two-lap Helmet Dash in  34.88 seconds, then Al Slaughter won his eight-lap heat race with a new record time of 2 minutes, 19.26 seconds.

Cossey captured the 25-lap feature win over Ward in a record time of seven minutes, 37.76 seconds to score his second feature win in four nights, to go along with his Thursday night win at the Houston Speedbowl. Cossey’s Alamo Downs win on the 13^th marked his tenth midget feature win of the 1940 season.

Late in feature on the 13^th, three of the top cars driven by Dick Word, Lou Turberville and Earl Simmons tangled in front of the grandstands after Word’s car blew its water hose, and Word and Turberville both suffered facial cuts in the accident.  

Cossey became the first Alamo Downs repeat winner as he won on October 20^th in a program that extended the heat races to ten laps in length, and stretched the feature to 30 laps.  

The field on October 27^th featured new entries from Charlie Miller, the 1940 American Automobile Association (AAA) eastern midget series champion and the AAA Eastern midget runner-up George Fonder.

Al Slaughter scored his second Alamo win in the 14-car “Fall Championship” 30-lap race on October 27th, as he again went wire-to-wire to beat the $3000 'Jackson Special,' an Offenhauser powered car driven by Dallas’ “King of the Midgets” William Ben ‘Red’ Hodges.  

On November 3^rd, Slaughter won his heat race then powered to his third Alamo feature win over the helmet dash winner Miller. Car counts at Alamo Downs continued to increase such that on the 3^rd, the 10-lap Class ‘B’ feature featured an eighteen-car starting field.

On November 17th, Kansas City’s Vito Calia captured his 8-lap heat race in a new record time of 2 minutes 16.84 seconds, then finished  close second place behind Jim Ward in the first semi-main. Slaughter took the point for the first three laps of the 25-lap feature until Calia took over the lead and went on to set a new track record as he won with a time of seven minutes and 7.43 seconds.

Rain cancelled the races scheduled for November 25^th and before the next race on December 1, ‘Doc’ Cossey bought a new Elto outboard-powered midget and installed Mel Wainwright as the driver.  

Many of the Alamo Downs racers took part in the Thanksgiving night 100-lap “Southern Grand Prix” race in Houston won by ‘Red’ Hodges, and as a result only 20 cars signed in at Alamo Downs on December 1. To compound the low car count, only about 1400 fans showed up to watch the program won by ‘Red’ Hodges in the Jackson Offenhauser powered midget. 

The afternoon of December 8^th marked the final scheduled race at Alamo Downs for the 1940 season as the Lavely clan planned to head to the Pacific Coast to sign up more drivers for the 1941 Alamo Downs season set to open in February.  The 50-lap Class A championship race topped the December 8th program supplemented by the 15-lap Class B championship race.

The midget track on the other side of San Antonio on Seguin Highway also scheduled a race on that Sunday afternoon which diluted the field of entries at Alamo Downs to just 25 cars. ‘Red’ Hodges captured the 50-lap Class A feature but fell short of winning the 1940 track championship by six points, as Slaughter passed “Rabbit” Musik on the last lap to claim second place and secure enough points to win the championship. 

The Lavely’s ambitious plans for the 1941 Alamo Downs midget racing season never materialized and there is no evidence of another race held there. In January 1942 a fire swept through a stable on the Alamo Downs grounds and killed five race horses, then in September 1947 another fire partially destroyed the wood, concrete and steel paddock and grandstand. The area once occupied by the Alamo Downs track is now part of the Alamo Downs Business Park.

 

The Wally Stokes story

Part one

Wallace “Wally” Stokes was a journeyman race car driver who raced ‘big cars’ and midget race cars on the dirt tracks of America during the rough and tumble nineteen thirties and the active post-war period. Just as Wally was on the cusp of a breakthrough into the upper echelon of the sport of auto racing, he was struck down in a traffic accident in 1949.    

Stokes, who for publicity purposes sometimes claimed Honolulu as his birthplace, hailed from the village of Willoughby Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie east of Cleveland.


Born on May 21, 1913 Wally was the first child and only son of Edward a carpenter and Bertha Stokes who latter was joined by two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Alma. We do not know what drew young Stokes in automobile racing, but by age 22 he raced in in events with the Jones Speedway Association circuit.  

This association led by David W.A. Jones claimed to operate 21 tracks in the Eastern United States scheduled a July 4, 1935 racing program at the Dawson Driving Park in southwestern Pennsylvania.  The Dawson Driving Park was a slightly banked half-mile dirt track built around the turn of the twentieth century for harness racing.


Overlooking the track located about ½-mile north of the small town of Dawson which is situated on the bank of the Youghiogheny River the facility featured a covered wooden grandstand,

The Dawson Driving Park thrived and expanded and became the hub of Tyrone township activities - in addition to hosting harness races, the grounds which included an auditorium became the site of mushball tournaments, dances, socials, family reunions and for a time the County Fair.


The Park hosted its first automobile race on September 19, 1925, the last day of the Fayette County Fair, a 25-mile affair won by future three-time Indianapolis ‘500’ competitor William ‘Speed’ Gardner of New Kensington Pennsylvania in a time of 28 minutes and 21 seconds.

Promoter Bud Lewis continued to present automobile races annually at the Dawson Driving Park until tragedy struck during the 100-mile race on September 20, 1930. One of the racers, Lawrence ‘Mike’ Hickson was killed after his Frontenac car catapulted high off the embankment and overturned.


Hickson was trapped beneath the wreckage and died four hours after the accident from a fractured skull and crushed chest in the nearby Connellsville State Hospital. Mike who had started racing in 1923, was one half of a pair of racing brothers from Pittsburgh - his brother Bill had died in a crash during a race in Butler Pennsylvania six years earlier.

It appears that after the 1930 accident, the Dawson Driving Park did not host an automobile race again until 1935 with the arrival of a new promoter. Advance publicity from the Jones Speedway Association before the July 4^th event promised two preliminary five-mile races followed by 100 laps of racing in the 50-mile feature.  

The Daily Reporter of Connellsville provided a partial list of the 22 entered drivers, which included Larry King of Clarksburg West Virginia, the 1934 champion of the Jones circuit with a Dreyer Hal. King who reportedly had won the pole position in nine of his eleven starts in 1934 and 1935 was joined by Johnny Ritter of Detroit as well as Buckeye drivers Bill Chittum and Shorty Wolfe of Columbus along with Spud Green and Wally Stokes from Akron.

The race starter, a man named Eddie Young would be assisted by Roy Young “the state auto racing champion of 1932 and 1933.”  A late entrant was local driver Dick Furtney from Connellsville, billed as “the former Tri-State champion attempting a comeback.” The Daily Reporter of Connellsville also reported that “unusual is the fact that the races will start Pacific Coast style, an innovation of the Jones Speedway. All drivers will be introduced to the audience.”

On July 3 the Morning Herald newspaper of Uniontown reported that “the track has been specially prepared by a corps of workers busy for the previous ten days making necessary repairs.”  All that work went for naught when rain on the 4^th forced the race to be delayed until July Sunday 7^th making this one of the earliest Sunday auto races in the Commonwealth which had banned the presentation of sporting events on Sundays until 1933.

The rescheduled race was a disaster – only 600 fans showed (termed in the press as “a surprisingly poor turnout”) and when the gate receipts failed to reach $800, Jones Speedway Association officials eliminated the two preliminary five-mile races and cut the length of the feature down to 25 miles.

Many of the advertised drivers including King, Ritter, Wolfe and Chittum did not appear and there only twelve cars and drivers on the grounds. The time trials were delayed for two hours as the drivers refused to run until the guaranteed purse of $400 was brought to the track in cash. Once activities started, Garnet “Bud” Henderson of Akron in his Hal was the day’s fastest qualifier with a lap of 32 seconds flat against the track record of 29.2 seconds.

The following day’s article in the Daily Courier of Connellsville reported that “Jones Speedways has a fine reputation in other sections of the county for similar programs, but failed to make an impression here. There was a feeling of dissatisfaction and indignation among the spectators who had to ante over big fees to gain admittance.” Worse yet the article stated the “failure to properly treat the course resulted in clouds of dust blanketing the track” which contributed to the day’s worst accident.

On the second lap of the 25-mile race, Henderson led trailed by Larry Evans, Adelbert ‘Deb’ Snyder in his Hal, and 25-year-old Johnstown driver Ivan ‘Butch’ Baumgardner, who sometimes raced under the assumed name of Gardner. As the 10-car starting field entered the third turn, Baumgardner “got lost in the dust,” and his car partially spun and blew a tire. With the steering on the car damaged, the out of control car careened through the fence and over the embankment. Baumgardner was thrown against the steering wheel during the crash and suffered a fractured clavicle and fractured ribs.   

On the third lap, Evans whose car was slower on the straights, but faster through the corners, took the lead from Henderson. Evans built his lead, and nearly lapped the second-place machine on the 40^th lap but Larry eased off the throttle and won by 7/8 of a lap over Henderson with Snyder third in what the next day’s Daily Courier headline called a “thrilling auto derby.”


Nine of the ten starters finished the race with the former Tri-State champion Dick Furtney in seventh place and Wally Stokes the eighth-place finisher in a Riley powered machine finished far ahead of the slowest car driven by Pittsburgh’s Harry Unger.   

The Daily Courier article about the Dawson race closed with a statement from the Fayette County Fair Association, the group the owned the track. The statement read that “the Association had no part in the promotion,” and that “it had previously sponsored similar shows which always were commended by the thousands that turned out because of the large field of drivers available and the promptness with which all the advertised events were conducted.”   

The following year, the Uniontown Motoring Club sponsored a midget car race at Dawson on Labor Day 1936 as part of the club’s annual picnic. Newspaper advertisements placed by the promoter, Speed Events Enterprise, promised “three solid hours of racing thrills” with 12-15 cars in time trials and five races for a 50-cent admission charge.

Al Bonnell of Erie was the fast qualifier and won the trophy dash but Floyd Fogel who claimed Havre France as his hometown won the day’s 8-lap feature race in the ‘Peugeot Special’ midget. The little cars were not a hit, a crowd of 2000 witnessed what appears to have been the last automobile race held at the Dawson Driving Park.  The facility slowly faded into history although the outline of the half-mile track is still visible along Banning Road north of Dawson.  

Saturday August 18, 1935 found Wally Stokes and his ‘Riley Special’ at 4-H Speedway near Dunbar West Virginia, a ½-mile Fairgrounds dirt track built for horse racing that was also known as Dunbar Speedway. In addition to Stokes, many of the Jones Speedway Association regulars were entered - Larry Evans, Bill Chittum, Bud Henderson, Deb Snyder, Speed Haynes with his Frontenac and the “wild driving” Clyde Schwartz in a Cragar Special.


The five-event afternoon program was topped off by a 20-mile race for the “West Virginia State Championship.”  We don’t have the details of that race, but the two subsequent 1935 ‘big car’ races held at Dunbar were promoted by the Dixie Racing Association.

Wally Stokes was an entrant for the July 4, 1936 races held at the half-mile Jenners Speedway with the 100-lap feature sanctioned by the National Auto Racing Association. Along with Stokes, the entry list included Bud Henderson, the 1935 Central States Racing Association (CSRA) who now listed his hometown as Los Angeles, in a new Miller and the ‘southern champion” Larry Beckett of Tampa Florida. While the Miller was a purpose-built racing car, all the other cars – the Hal, the Cragar, and the Frontenac were all powered by modified versions of the four-cylinder Ford Model B engine.

The touring stars were joined by three local Jennerstown drivers - Butch Gardner, Mike Serokman and George Polychak in a “knee action” Chevrolet. The Bedford Gazette noted that a two-man Indianapolis car that placed eighth in the 1934 race would appear along with unnamed California drivers “that have become very popular on the West Coast.” 

Pre-race reports stated that the track had been “reconditioned to the peak of perfection” and would be “dustless,” but such was not the case. The schedule called for time trials at 1 PM followed by a pair of five-mile preliminary races with the 100-lap feature race set to take the green flag at 2 PM, but rain delayed the start of the day’s racing program.

“Whitey” Flickinger won the first preliminary race, then in during the second five-mile race, the left front wheel came of the machine of ‘Butch’ Gardner (whose real name was Baumgardner- he was the driver who crashed at Dawson in 1935). The wheel “sliced into the air and sailed over the heads of onlookers,” but did not strike anyone, and the second race was won by Ted Wright.   

Reports the next day carried in the Somerset Daily Herald stated that as the Jenners race approached lap 30, “the track had dried and clouds of yellow dust went skyward behind each car.”   Soon, the paper reported, “the clouds of dust were so thick you could have sliced them with a shovel.”  To compound the dust problem, the track was rough as the paper reported “there were depressions and humps low enough to shoot the car high off the ground.”

On lap 30, as Joseph Ventre tried to pass under Paul Snyder’s machine in one of the turns, the right rear wheel of Ventre’s car touched the left front wheel of Snyder’s car.  Both cars flipped, with Snyder thrown onto the track while Ventre hung onto his car which landed on all four wheels then tore through a nearby barbed wire fencing before it finally overturned.


Ventre was horribly lacerated by his car’s trip through the fencing, and an eyewitness reported that he saw Snyder rise to his knees before he was hit by two passing cars as he was all but invisible through the dust.  

The race was immediately stopped and both the injured drivers loaded into ambulances and taken to the Somerset General Hospital. Snyder had suffered a broken neck and was pronounced dead on arrival, while Ventre who suffered a fractured skull and multiple deep cuts passed away at 11 PM that evening.  

After an hour-long delay, the race resumed, and Mike Serokman passed the early leader Flickinger, but later while in the lead, a connecting rod broke in Serokman’s engine.  With Serokman’s retirement, Flickinger from Sebring Ohio regained the lead and went on to the victory as the race was shortened to 40 laps. Flickinger claimed the $250 purse as Ted Wright of Greensburg finished second and Butch Gardner was the third-place finisher.

Records of the next few years of Stokes’ career are spotty, but we know that Wally won the 1939 & 1940 CSRA Memorial Day 25-lap feature race at Sharon Speedway in Pennsylvania driving Andy Dunlop’s Miller Marine powered big car. Despite their success, according to Dunlop, in his book Damn Few Died in Bed written with Thomas Saal, “Wally wasn’t interested in driving for me regularly as he was driving midgets for other owners at the time.” Stokes’ racing as this time was not well documented in newspaper reporting but he was a star participant in the October 6, 1940 100-lap “Ohio State Midget Championship Classic” at the ½-mile Canfield Fairgrounds oval.  

The fall and winter of 1940 found Stokes racing in San Antonio, Texas as he scored a second-place finish in the ‘B’ feature on Sunday November 17 at the 1/5-mile Alamo Downs Raceway behind Roy Houston. Stokes won the ‘B’ feature at Alamo Downs on December 1 and set a new but short-lived 10-lap record of 2 minutes 49.55 seconds.

On December 22, 1940, Stokes won the evening’s third heat race and the Australian Pursuit race at Alamo Downs as he edged the eventual feature winner, the one-armed Wes Saegesser.


The following week, Wally finished third in his heat race and again won the Australian Pursuit race but was involved in a three-car crash during the feature with Ralph Purnell, whose car had caught fire the week before, and Howard Brand. None of the three drivers were injured, but they were unable to resume racing after the crash. 

We’ll continue with the story of Wally Stokes’ racing career in our next installment.