46. FIRSTS: First Oval-Track Auto Race

Weird Island

In 1896, the very first auto race on an oval track took place at the Rhode Island State Fair, just one year after the first city-to-city auto race in the world took place. Cars were so new, no one knew what to call them. Horseless wagons? Motor wagons? Motocycles? Electric Traps?

Episode Source Material:

• Left Turns In The Ocean State | Hemmings
• Scientific American Volume 75
• The Autocar: A Journal Published in the interests of the mechanically-propelled road carriage
• 1896 Novel Race
• My Home Track - Rhode Island and the late, great Narragansett Park Speedway - NASCAR Talk | NBC Sports
• Boston Sunday Globe Archives, Sep 19, 1915, p. 15
• Narragansett Park Speedway
• The First Automobile Races in America (Upd. Cranston, Rhode Island) - PreWarCar
• A Look Back On Rhode Island's Narragansett Park
• Chicago Times-Herald race - Wikipedia
• The Forgotten Car That Won America's First Auto Race | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
• Oval track racing - Wikipedia
• Duryea Motor Wagon Company - Wikipedia
• The Duryea Motor Wagon: There's a First Time for Everything | 2020
• Time Lapse: Turrets, tents and hippies -- where, when, what's happening here?
• History of Auto Racing
• automobile racing | Britannica
• Andrew L. Riker - Wikipedia
• History of the American Automobile - Cole's Collision Center
• Racing in America
• Automobile History.
• History of the automobile - Wikipedia
• Race track - Wikipedia
• Horseracing in the US | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
• First asphalt superspeedway track | Guinness World Records(1.366%2D,%2Fh%20(76.26%20mph).
• Riker Automobiles before they merge into Electric Vehicle Company and Columbia . . . . . .
• The day electricity led the way in the first American auto race