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 Park, and on July 20, 1969, the first Fort Wayne Soap Box Derby ran down it: sixty cars, boys aged eleven to fifteen, the winner taking a $500 savings bond and a paid trip to Derby Downs in Akron, Ohio, to race for a $7,500 college scholarship. The local prize table stayed proudly local — by 1974 it included Magnavox color and black-and-white televisions, radios, and a watch. The end of the Fort Wayne race is where the sources divide, and the difference is printed rather than settled: the city parks department's history of Franke Park gives 1992 as the last derby and records that the BMX track replaced the derby track in 1994, while the derby families' own accounts in the Waynedale News give 1987 as the last Franke Park race and name Shannon Neumann as the last local champion to represent Fort Wayne at Akron — after which Fort Wayne racers qualified through other cities' races, as Kalene Powell of Fort Wayne did when she won the Stock local championship at Goshen in 2002, finished fourth of 148 cars in the Stock division at Akron, and won the Super Stock local at Valparaiso in 2003. In the All-American Soap Box Derby's own published roll of champions from 1934 through 2026, no winner is listed from Fort Wayne; Indiana's champions came from Muncie, Anderson, South Bend, Gary, Indianapolis, and Elkhart County.

Sources:

1. City of Fort Wayne, Parks & Recreation, "Franke Park History" — the March 24, 1969 ground-breaking, the first derby of July 20, 1969 with sixty cars, the 1974 prizes, the last derby in 1992, and the BMX track's replacement of the derby track in 1994.
2. The Waynedale News, July 10, 2002 and July 9, 2003 — the Powell family's derby record: the last Franke Park race in 1987, Shannon Neumann as the last Fort Wayne local champion, and Kalene Powell's Goshen and Valparaiso championships and Akron finishes.
3. All-American Soap Box Derby, "Past Champions" (soapboxderby.org) — the full winners' roll, 1934–2026, read for a Fort Wayne champion; none appears.