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Racing · The speed record
Fort Wayne has raced on almost everything it has built. Its first track was a trotting course on the north edge of town, and within ten years automobiles were racing on it before crowds of sixteen thousand. Its fairgrounds speedway of the 1930s was a high-banked dirt bowl so fast and so dangerous that a later television history called it a man killer. In the winter of 1956 the first race the United States Auto Club ever sanctioned was run on the cement floor of the Memorial Coliseum, and indoor midget racing has lived in that building, in two eras, ever since. The city's stock-car years ran at three ovals — the big fairgrounds track, a farmers'-field track on South Anthony built out of spite, and a half-mile beside the airport runways that held on until 2019. Its children raced gravity cars down a purpose-built hill in Franke Park for a generation. This section holds the documented record of all of it: the tracks, the races, the drivers, and the price the record shows.
Driving Park: where Fort Wayne first raced
1892 — 1913
A trotting park that took to automobiles: In November 1892 Frederick J. Hayden sold part of his land on the northern outskirts of the city to the newly formed Fort Wayne Driving Association — D. N. and S. M. Foster, Louis and…
Fort Wayne Speedway: the big track
1930 — 1964
The fastest bowl in Indiana, and the most dangerous: On farmland along dirt California Road, on the county fairgrounds north of where Glenbrook Square stands today on Coliseum Boulevard, the builder Frank Funk — who also built…
South Anthony Speedway: the little track
1951 — 1964
Built out of a quarrel: The little track existed because of the big one. The fairgrounds owner who kept his horses at the Fort Wayne Speedway would not let the drivers use the dirt track while he worked the horses out, and, in…
The Coliseum indoors: where USAC began
1953 — 1989
Midgets on the hockey rink: In January 1953, months after the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum opened, indoor auto racing began on a converted hockey rink inside the arena — a cement oval given in the drivers' records as a…
Baer Field Speedway: the track by the airport
1964 — 2019
Stock cars beside the runways: The year the fairgrounds tracks died, Fort Wayne's next speedway was already growing. In 1962 a small go-kart track was laid out in the back field of John Weisenauer's farm at 4331 Winters Road…
The Soap Box Derby at Franke Park
1969 — 1992
Gravity racing, taken seriously: Fort Wayne's documented derby begins with a building project. On March 24, 1969, Tom Chapman, secretary of Fort Wayne Soap Box Derby, Inc., broke ground for a purpose-built derby track in Franke…
The Rumble in Fort Wayne
1998 — present
The indoor tradition, revived: When the Coliseum's Exposition Center opened in 1998, Ohio concert promoter Tony Barhorst and race promoter Jack Calabrase — the city's proclamation names both as the Rumble's founders — brought the…
The home drivers: Bullet Bobby and the Coes
1953 — present
Fifty years of one family: The weekly fields at Fort Wayne's ovals were filled by local men whose names meant more at Winters Road and South Anthony than any visitor's. Bob Coe took to the South Anthony Speedway in 1953 in a 1937…
The Indianapolis roster: Fort Wayne's honest line
Checked against the Speedway's driver record
No starter — and one who nearly was: The Indianapolis 500's driver record, checked for Fort Wayne, gives the city a thin and honest line: no driver born in Fort Wayne has started the 500 in the record this history could reach.…
Chloe Chambers: raised here, racing the world
Born 2004 — racing
Fort Wayne's driver on the Formula ladder: The most successful racing driver Fort Wayne has produced in the modern record was born in Guangdong, China, on June 14, 2004, and raised in Fort Wayne — the Haas Formula 1 team's…
The price: the speedway's dead
1931 — 1953
Recorded plainly, as the papers recorded them: The Fort Wayne Speedway's speed was bought at a price the newspapers of the day reported in a paragraph at a time. In May 1931 Raymond Meyers, 31, of Indianapolis, was killed during…
Drag racing: the strip Fort Wayne never had
The documented absence, and what filled it
A negative, with its reasons: No purpose-built drag strip has operated inside Fort Wayne in the record. What the city had instead was a short trip: the nearest documented strip was the eighth-mile at Avilla, in Noble County just…
Motorcycles: the two-wheeled record
1902 — 1913, and after
Brief, because the record is: Motorcycle racing's documented Fort Wayne chapter belongs to the fair years at Driving Park, where the track histories record that auto and motorcycle races were frequently held and were a highlight…
Karting: where Baer Field began
1962 — present
The small cars that started and outlasted: Fort Wayne's longest-running racing form is its smallest. Baer Field itself began as a go-kart track in 1962, two years before the half-mile rose beside it; when the original kart layout…
Racing on the Water
The rivers' racing record
No roostertails on the three rivers: Fort Wayne's rivers are narrow, dammed at the downtown confluence, and unsuited to powerboat racing, and no sanctioned powerboat or hydroplane racing on them appears in the record — the city's…