Excerpt from “The Legend of the First Super Speedway”: Barney Oldfield at the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race
Mark Dill's marvelous book "The Legend of the First Super Speedway" chronicles tales of Barney Oldfield's journey through the pioneering age of American auto racing. With Mark's permission, below is the section on when Oldfield attended the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race.
Additional photos from my collection.
Enjoy,
Howard Kroplick
"Since spring, it seemed to Barney Oldfield that all he heard people talk about was the big international road race William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. and Art Pardington planned on Long Island, New York."
Oldfield in the 1904 Peerless Green Dragon
"The fella that owns the car is Clarence Gray Dinsmore. It's the car Camille Jenatzy won the James Gordon Bennett Cup with last year and finished second this year."
Dinsmore's #9 Mercedes
"Oldfield couldn't believe his eyes. Vanderbilt!"
Willie K in his 1904 Mercedes
"At the Westbury start-finish, Oldfield brought the Peerless to a halt."
"Old Willie K's having a high time, isn't he? This is a damn big show, Fisher said."
"There is going to be twenty or thirty thousand people here."
"Fisher wanted to stay in Mineola and Westbury, where most of the automobile men were."
"Oldfield pressed on to the town of Hempstead, where Moores told him he would find one of the two control points on the course."
The Hempstead Control
"Oldfield and his friends stopped at the Continental Tire depot, just outside of the Hempstead control. They knew five Mercedes entries used Continental tires."
"Oldfield talked about whipping Alexander Winton and Vanderbilt and hitting the mile-a-minute record in old Nin-Ninety-Nine."
"Driving around this big old course and seeing all these people lined up to run this giant race is something else."
Comments
The excitement jumps off of every sentence…
Many thanks to Mark Dill and his Website, The First Super Speedway, which was a great resource I cited in the National Register of Historic Places nomination for Auto Hall of Fame starter Fred Wagner’s Smithtown home (1912) listed on the NR in 2019 (see Vanderbilt Cup Racing post on “Residence of the Starter of Five Vanderbilt Cup Races . . .”). In 1915, Barney Oldfield and his wife were both in Fred’s house when Mrs. Wagner was presented by a committee with a “token of appreciation” for being a “charming hostess” providing meals for about 300 Motor Boosters at the Wagner’s 10th Annual Picnic outing at their Sunnybrook Farm. Oldfield and Wagner were photographed that September day with racing greats Burman, Cooper, DePalma, Harding, Resta, Robertson, Stutz . . . DePalma had just won the Indy 500 in May. Wagner’s friends rallied to Smithtown following the loss of A.R. Pardington (of Smithtown) in late July. Earlier that month, Wagner flagged in “first” on the courses at Sioux City Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska . . ., the future WWI flying ace Eddie Rickenbacher (who first would be taught to fly by Fred’s neighbor the future Capt. James Ely Miller, first WWI recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross. Fred’s huge dairy barn, within sight of his house, would become the Hall for the American Legion Post named in honor of Miller and rededicated in 2020 on the Post’s Centennial Anniversary. Thank you, Mark and Howard, for helping to get Fred’s American legacy honored nationally.
Howard:
Thanks for posting this information on Mark Dill’s work; I also read Mark’s blog site regularly. It’s important that we keep automotive history alive and relevant. I didn’t realize that he and I live close to each other; I’m contacting him to get a copy of the book.