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 recollection of the men who were there, some of the drivers simply went elsewhere. In 1951 Mason and Robert McCulloch and Ray Walter built a speedway on the Harber family farm along South Anthony Boulevard — Carl Harber Jr., whose father owned the farm, is the record's witness — a 3/8-mile oval, dirt for its first season and then paved and slightly enlarged, lighted, and racing two nights a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Stock cars came first, with midgets mixed in; the program ran on to modifieds and super modifieds, and all the big-name drivers of the local circuit came out to drive. Bob Coe began there in 1953. South Anthony closed in 1964, the same year as the Fort Wayne Speedway, its land grown too valuable to race on; Howard Bice, who had raced there, bought the bleachers and the concrete walls — cast in eight-foot sections — and hauled them to Avilla, where he built Avilla Raceway. The houses of the Victoria Park neighborhood stand on the farm now.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, "South Anthony Speedway" — the 1951 construction on the Harber farm, the dirt-to-asphalt course, Tuesday and Saturday nights, the 1964 closing, and the removal of the bleachers and walls to Avilla, drawing on the Journal Gazette retrospective record (Bradtmiller and Stovall, quoted) and the Lost Dirt Tracks summary.
2. J. Daniel Heath, Big Track Little Track (2022) — the "little track," a 3/8-mile oval existing 1951–1964, as described in the book's published summary.