The Marchbanks Speedway – Hanford California

Part two of the history of the first superspeedway west of the Mississippi

For the 1960 racing season Kings County California farmer Bircha Lewis “B.L”. Marchbanks expanded his 160-acre stadium automobile racing venue southeast of Hanford with the construction of a new 1-3/8-mile long paved oval with three corners that incorporated the sharp 22-degree banked first turn shared with the existing ½-mile paved oval track.

The new track, reportedly designed by Marchbanks himself, also featured a lake in the infield, created when the material removed was used to the build the banking for the new tri-oval layout.  Marchbanks reportedly spent $200,000 (later listed as $700,000 then as much as $1 million) on the improvements which included a new 7,000-seat grandstand located on the front straightaway near the entry of the first turn.  

The first event at the new Marchbanks Stadium were boat drag races on the lake held the weekend of February 13 & 14 1960 sanctioned by the National Boat Timing Association of Bakersfield which had originated the sport several years earlier.  Fans paid an admission charge of $1.00 each to watch 15 classes of racing in time trials and eliminations and Harold Kindsvater of Fresno won Top Eliminator honors with a run of 100.1 miles per hour (MPH).

That same week, Mr. Marchbanks traveled to Daytona Beach Florida site of the Daytona ‘500’ to drum up interest for the upcoming ‘California 250’ NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Racing) race scheduled for June on his new speedway.  Rex White related his initial impression of Marchbanks in his autobiography Gold Thunder. “While at Daytona I met this character from California named Marchbanks - everywhere he went he wore a cowboy hat and boots. He had come from California to get drivers to run his new track in Hanford - Joe Weatherly and I agreed, making plans to go in June.”  

Rex White and Joe Weatherly were not yet “big names” in NASCAR although White had won five Grand National races in 1959 in his own gold and white #4 Chevrolet Impala and Weatherly had notched 12 wins in four seasons in the NASCAR convertible division as a factory-backed Ford Thunderbird driver.

The June 11^th and 12^th weekend races were advertised as “the biggest race west of the Mississippi” with a hardtop race scheduled for the half-mile track on Saturday night prior to the Sunday afternoon main event. Pre-race newspaper articles falsely stated that the ‘California 250’ “would attract the nation’s leading late model drivers among them Lee and Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson, Bobby Johns, Buck Baker and Fireball Roberts.”    

A majority of the 33-car starting field for the ‘California 250’ were California drivers with a sprinkling of other drivers from Western states - White and Weatherly were the only Southeastern NASCAR drivers to make the trip to California. White recalled in his autobiography, Gold Thunder that “many of the drivers decided not to go to California as the money was too little to warrant the trip. I’d promised Marchbanks I’d be in his inaugural race and signed the registration. Since he’d advertised my entry and Bill France was flying me out and back I was committed to go.” Rather than his regular 1960 Chevrolet wrenched by Louis Clements, White was scheduled to drive a 1959 Ford owned by legendary West Coast racer Scotty Cain, while Weatherly was entered in a 1960 Ford owned and sponsored by Torrance California car dealer Vel Miletich.

With a total posted purse of $18,425 (including $4,875 in contingency money) NASCAR President Bill France, on hand for the race, proclaimed it to be “the biggest stock car race on the west coast since the Gilmore Gold trophy race at Mines Field in 1934” and that “this little town will be the hub of auto racing west of the Rockies.”  

some of the drivers labeled the first turn “dangerous” after pre-race practice on Friday, but in Saturday afternoon qualifying, Frank Secrist of nearby Oildale won the coveted pole position at a reported average speed of 94 MPH trailed by Colorado’s John Rostek, Lloyd Dane and Cain with Fritz Wilson rounding out the top five.  

According to newspaper reports, Secrist’s 1960 Ford Starliner “hit 137 MPH on the straights.” White who had won earlier in April and was in third place in Grand National points qualified ninth while Weatherly, tenth in points, and the hottest driver on the NASCAR circuit with three wins so far in 1960, started 32^nd.   

After qualifying and prior to the start of the hardtop race the track hosted a “cowboy barbeque” for fans at the cost of $1.00 a plate. Rex White remembered that “Marchbanks perhaps should have opened a restaurant. He got a front-end loader, dug a hole in ground, added an air tunnel, built a fire in the hole and put timbers over the fire. He let it burn down to coals and added mesquite. Then he lowered a dead skinned cow into the timbers and covered the whole thing over with dirt. It cooked for 24 hours. When he took that cow out, he cut away dirty part of the meat and served it to fans. I ate some myself and I’ll tell you it was good.” 

The morning of the race, 400 Autolite parts distributors from various locations throughout Northern California arrived in eight chartered Greyhound busses to join the sold-out crowd. Secrist, Cain, Dane and Las Vegas’ Mel Larson each took turns in the lead before Marvin Porter from Redlands California, the 1959 NASCAR Short Track National Champion led the final 50 laps to claim the victory, with his teammate for this race, Weatherly, 46 seconds behind him.

Rex White finished the ‘California 250’ in eighth place, which gained him valuable points on his way to the 1960 NASCAR Grand National championship.  Although White misidentified the track surface incorrectly in his autobiography, Gold Thunder as he recalled that “the track was good considering it was dirt but there was little hope of its survival. They had a few grandstands, outhouse toilets and unbearable heat - race day it was 104 degrees.”

In July 1960, the banked half-mile track hosted the Formula Racing Association two-day event which featured Formula Juniors and sports cars including lady racer Odette Bigler with a Lotus 18, that competed for cash prizes. This professional sport car race was repeated in 1961 with an event that attracted many prestigious West Coast racers including Jack McAfee and Bruce Eglinton.      

On September 11, 1960, the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) motorcycles raced in a scheduled 100-mile race that was race shortened to 75 miles due to the heat. Though it is undetermined which of the three tracks hosted the event, three-time AMA champion Joe Leonard held a two-lap lead when his machine broke a valve, and Don Smith took the victory. 

A week later Marchbanks Stadium hosted a two-day event for the California Sports Car Club along with “grand prix motorcycles” on the 1.8-mile road course which used portions of the 1.4-mile tri-oval, the 1/3-mile oval and the ½-mile oval. With the cars and cycles racing on what was described as the “Monza-style banking” lap speeds of over 100 MPH were optimistically predicted in pre-race news articles.

Perhaps due to concerns about heat, the date for the 1961 NASCAR ‘California 250’ was moved to March 12 and featured a larger purse of $14,075 with $2,600 earmarked for the race winner. Rex White returned, this time joined by fellow Southerners Edwin ‘Banjo’ Matthews and Glen ‘Fireball’ Roberts. Roberts, in a 1961 Pontiac owned by Arizona’s JD Braswell, started on the outside of the front row, led every one of the 179 laps, and he won by more than two laps over second place Eddie Gray’s 1961 Ford.   

Throughout the summer and fall of 1961 for 22 consecutive Saturday nights beginning May 6, the Marchbanks Stadium half-mile track hosted a modified and claimer car racing program, with 1960 track champion Frank Secrist the headliner for the modified program along with Bud Dyson, Al Pombo and Johnny Mello, with the claimer field led by Bob Knight and Eddie ‘Bad Boy’ Bradshaw.  Marchbanks with the umbrella company, Marchbanks Sports Clubs Inc., continued as the promoter at Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale. 

In early November 1961, perhaps based on the success of the Formula racing events, B.L. Marchbanks promoted “the greatest road show race on the West Coast,” a 125-mile race with the 75 fastest “stock cars, late models, modified and claimer drivers and cars on the West Coast.” Dubbed the ‘Pacific Coast Championship Road Race,’ sanctioned by NASCAR to be held on the nine-turn 1.8-mile road course, the race attracted the entry of headliner Al Pombo, who was billed as “the best driver to come out of Fresno since Bill Vukovich.”  Pombo was the 1961 California state hardtop racing champion as well as the Kearney Bowl and Clovis Speedway track champion.    

For the 1962 season, Mr. Marchbanks was no longer the promoter of Bakersfield Speedway, replaced by boxing promoter Ed York’s Racing Associates Inc. In early 1962 Marchbanks Speedway advertised that they would hold NHRA sanctioned drag races the third Sunday of every month but it is unknown what if any other weekly racing programs were held during the 1962 season.

On Sunday April 8, the track hosted a NASCAR sanctioned 100-mile “new stock car race” for Pacific Coast Late Models on the 1.4-mile tri-oval.  Entries included Pombo in a 1961 Oldsmobile, Scotty Cain in a 1962 Ford along with Lloyd Dane, Louie Unser in a 1962 Pontiac, and 1951 Marchbanks NASCAR winner Danny Weinberg all competing for a $4,200 purse.  

Downey’s Danny Letner, the 1955 NASCAR Pacific Coast champion, won the pole position in a 1961 Ford with Eddie Gray alongside to lead the 30-car starting field to the green flag. Only 4500 fans turned out to watch Letner lead the 72-lap race wire-to-wire in what was apparently the last NASCAR Pacific Coast Late Model event held at Marchbanks.

With an announcement of an agreement in late April, the 1963 Marchbanks Stadium racing season opened on May 17 with the track operated by Racing Associates Inc. Initially Marchbanks Stadium ran a jalopy and sportsmen racing program on Friday nights with Bakersfield Speedway holding a similar program on Saturday nights along with periodic boxing matches at the facility.

Mid-way through the 1963 season, a figure-eight layout was added to the 1/2-mile Marchbanks oval for the new ‘Crazy 8’ racing program to cash in on a short-lived fad. These races were open to sportsmen, jalopies or modified cars, with the race stopped only if a car was upside down, on fire or if the driver was “obviously injured”- a track blockage did not necessitate any action by the flagman. Although the races were open to different types of cars, there was claimer rule in place such that the engine in a winning car could be claimed by a fellow competitor for $149.

For 1964, operations at the Marchbanks Stadium facility were about to take another turn with a new promoter which will be discussed in part three of our story.  

The Marchbanks Speedway

Hanford California

Part One- the early history of the first superspeedway west of the Mississippi River


This article previously appeared in the Classic Racing Times - subscribe at http://theclassicracingtimes.com/subscribe

Bircha Lewis “B.L”. Marchbanks was born in 1895 and grew up to become a cattle rancher in Lamb County in the southern part of the Texas panhandle until he went bankrupt in 1924 and lost his ranch. Marchbanks arrived in California nearly penniless and settled in Kings County in the Central Valley near the small town of Hanford.  

Through years of hard work he and his two sons-in law built a large cotton and corn farm southeast of Hanford, and in 1950 Marchbanks decided to devote 160 acres to the construction of a new stadium venue located at the corner of the Central Valley Highway (also known as 8th street in Hanford) and Idaho Avenue.

Marchbanks Stadium included a rodeo grounds and a half-mile dirt track with a quarter-mile long straightaway that would also be used for quarter-horse racing. The first rodeo took place during 1950, but B.L.’s hopes of pari-mutuel gambling never materialized, and automobile racing debuted with jalopy races on May 12, 1951.  

One of the more unusual features of the new facility was the building that was used primarily for the driver’s meetings – B. L. Marchbanks bought the old one-room  King Schoolhouse building and had it moved to the race track site which was just north and east of his ranch home at 6888 Idaho Avenue.  

Later that year, the fledgling National Association of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) group staged five Grand National races in California; three at the half-mile dirt Carrell Speedway in Gardena, one at the 5/8-mile high-banked oil-dirt Oakland Stadium, and on October 28 1951, a 200-lapper at the new Marchbanks Stadium.  

Admission to the race promoted by Johnny Mantz, the winner of the inaugural NASCAR ‘Southern 500’ the previous year, offered grandstand seats for $2.40 each while box seats were priced at $3.60 apiece.

The fans that arrived early to watch qualifying which began at 2:30 PM saw Danny Letner of Downey emerge as the fastest qualifier of the 31 cars with a best lap of 29.92 seconds. Other entries that aimed for their portion of the $3,550 total purse included North Carolina’s Marvin Panch, Oregon racer Herschel McGriff, sprint car and midget standout Allen Heath, and Indianapolis 500-mile race veterans Harold “Hal” Cole and James “Dick” Rathman.    

Herb Thomas, on his way to capturing the 1951 NASCAR championship with six wins already that season, led the first 34 laps in a 1951 Hudson owned by Marshall Teague until he was involved in a crash which handed the lead to second place starter Truman ‘Fonty’ Flock. ‘Fonty’  held the point until lap 74 when his ‘Red Devil’ 1951 Oldsmobile dropped out of the race on the same lap that the day’s fast qualifier Letner crashed out in spectacular fashion as barrel-rolled his 1951 Hudson three times.

Denny (sometimes stated as Danny) Weinberg in a 1951 Studebaker Commander V-8 owned by Tony Sampo of Downey picked up the lead on lap 75. Weinberg led the rest of the way and local newspapers reported that Weinberg “outlasted the nation’s point leaders to win” with only five cars reportedly running when Weinberg took the checkered flag.

Weinberg was a member of the family that owned and operated the Coastal Grain Company in Norwalk California a firm that processed and stored dairy feed and made loans to its customers to finance their farm and livestock operations. Robert Weinberg, a vice-president of Coastal Grain fielded entries for three years on the AAA Championship circuit from 1950 to 1952 for former Southern California track roadster standout Manny Auyolo.

During the 1952 racing season, B.L. Marchbanks staged a weekly slate of race that featured jalopies, hardtops and roadsters under the sanction of the Valley Jalopy Racing Association (VJRA).  On Friday Memorial Day 1952 Marchbanks Stadium held a 100-lap VJRA jalopy race that proved to have high a level of attrition as many cars failed to finish due to broken axles, tire blowouts and crashes into the retaining wall.

The VJRA, run by Ed Spellman, appears to have been a short-lived organization that sanctioned races only during the 1952 season at Marchbanks, and nearby Central Valley tracks in Visalia and Selma.   

An aerial photograph of the Marchbanks facility taken during 1953 showed off the addition of some new features - a one-third mile oval (oiled dirt) within the half-mile oval and a new short infield section that created a five-eighth mile road course. In addition to the newly constructed permanent parking facilities, the half-mile track had been paved with asphalt, and the facility opened on Mother’s Day May 9 1954 with a heavily-advertised race on the half-mile paved track for the URA “sprint cars.” Driver Bud Richmond suffered a concussion when his car crashed during warm-up laps.

For the 1954 racing season NASCAR had expanded to the West Coast under the direction of former champion midget driver turned race promoter Bob Barkheimer. The NASCAR Pacific Coast Late Model circuit presented a nine-race schedule at venues throughout California with   Marchbanks Stadium’s 100-lap race scheduled for Saturday June 26.

Don Basile who had previously managed Carrell and Clovis Speedways, told local newspaper reporters that NASCAR and the track planned for a 24-car field with at least eight different makes and models, but after qualifying was completed, only 22 cars representing six different makes started the race.

The field included entries from a pair of competitors that had participated in the 1951 NASCAR Marchbanks race, Danny Letner and Marvin Panch, but the 1951 winner Denny Weinberg had retired from racing. In addition to the race with a $2,500 guaranteed purse, the night’s admission price included a “free full half-hour” of fireworks.

The fast qualifier was John Soares who posted a lap at 29.264 seconds, almost 6/10 of a second faster than the 1951 pole position time. Soares led the first two circuits in his 1954 Dodge until he yielded to Panch’s similar machine, and Panch led the rest of the race to win $450 with Soares second and eventual inaugural NASCAR Pacific Coast series champion Lloyd Dane in eighth position.

NASCAR established a strong position and served as the regular sanctioning body for Marchbanks Stadium. After the 1955 season when it co-sanctioned the jalopies, modified hard tops and claiming races (for amateurs) with the Valley Stock Car Racing Association (VSCRA), NASCAR became the track’s sanctioning body for many years.

   

On July 23 1954 the Northern California-based Bay Cities Racing Association (BCRA) and the Southern California based United Racing Association (URA) staged an unusual mid-season jointly sanctioned 100-lap midget race on the Marchbanks Stadium 1/3 mile oiled dirt track which was won by BCRA two-time defending Johnny Baldwin.

Nearly a month later, on August 21 1954, BCRA and URA co-sanctioned another 100-lapper won by the URA points leader Billy Garrett with Baldwin second trailed by BCRA regulars Earl Motter and Norm Rapp in third and fourth places respectively. The midgets returned to the Marchbanks 1/3-mile track one more time during the 1955 season with the August 27 BCRA sanctioned race won by Johnny Baldwin.

 On Sunday October 10th 1954 Marchbanks Stadium hosted a $1,000 purse jalopy and modified hardtop race on the “speedy half-mile paved track” that featured such emerging Central Valley racing stars Frank Secrist and Johnny Mello. In late July 1955 regular competitor Ronald McLane was critically injured when he inexplicably walked across the track during a yellow caution flag period of the 500-lap race. Struck by a passing race car, the impact broke both of McLane’s legs and his pelvis and he was reportedly off work for a year.

Marchbanks Stadium hosted a “Little Indianapolis” 500-lap race for jalopies and hardtops during the Memorial Day holiday in both 1956 and 1957 but the events were marred by tragedy. During the May 29 1956 running of the race, Arlen Smith a 22-year old mechanic for the car of ‘Chick’ Connery was struck in the back and shoulder by a wheel that had left the race car driven by Fred Dudley of San Jose.

Smith a resident of Las Vegas suffered a concussion when his head hit the ground after he was knocked down and he unfortunately died at the Hanford Community Hospital two hours after the accident.

One year and a day later, during the 1957 “Little Indianapolis” race, Ernest “Ernie” Cornelson, a successful Central Valley area jalopy and modified racer perished when his “Beacon Propane Special” rolled over several times, slammed into the retaining wall and burst into flames. Newspapers reported that the 30-year old Cornelson was mercifully killed instantly in the crash, and the race which had just completed its 148th lap was stopped for over an hour as the wreckage was cleared.

During the 1958 season the Marchbanks Sports Club Inc. appeared as the sponsor of the amateur claiming jalopy races sanctioned by NASCAR held every Saturday night during the season.  On Saturday September 20 the Marchbanks Stadium featured California Racing Association-sanctioned "big car" races, and the Marchbanks 1958 season closed with a visit from the NASCAR modified and sportsman series which drew entries from both the southern and northern California series.

For the 1959 season, B. L. Marchbanks under the guise of his company Marchbanks Sports Club Inc. became the promoter of the Bakersfield Speedway in Oildale California, and he made dramatic changes to the facility that included paving the racing surface with asphalt. The renovated facility opened on May 30 1959 with a double-header program of claimer jalopies and modified stock cars with the jalopy feature won by Ron McLane and the modified feature won by Johnny Mello who scored a bonus of 100 silver dollars from promoter B. L. Marchbanks.     

Marchbanks Stadium meantime had opened its 1959 season on May 10 and in early June Marchbanks’ two paved tracks featured back-to-back Saturday and Sunday night URA midget programs. The Marchbanks Stadium 1959 racing season closed in October with the “Valley Championships” for the modified hardtops and jalopies.   Big changes were on the horizon for the 1960 season at Marchbanks Stadium which will be detailed in the second and final installment of the history of the Hanford superspeedway.