Abandoned History: The Time the Indianapolis 500 Moved to Cincinnati

That headline isn’t clickbait. In one of those random moments where one falls down the rabbit hole of the Internet, your author discovered a very interesting moment in history from the early part of the 20th century. It was a one-off event, where a new racetrack and its enterprising owners worked to bring the Indianapolis 500 event to Cincinnati, Ohio. The race actually happened, and it’s a part of history that’s worth telling.

The story began in 1913, when the village of Sharonville north of Cincinnati began construction of a racetrack. A rural farming area at the time, at the earliest census in 1920 the village had a population of only 753. The track was a wooden one, composed of long, thin planks not unlike those at a bowling alley. Board track racing, as it was called, was popular in the U.S. in the 1910s and 1920s, and used both circular and oval track designs.

The track in Sharonville was of the oval variety, and was two miles long. Each of its four sweeping bends was banked at 17 degrees, in what must have been a fairly harrowing experience: primitive tires, a wooden racing surface, and high speeds at an angle. The track used a lot of wood, and took three years to be completed.

The Cincinnati Motor Speedway opened in 1916 and held the First International Sweepstakes Race. The inaugural race was 300 miles long and took place on September 4, 1916. Major teams showed up to the race, with the likes of Peugeot, Mercedes, Sunbeam, Stutz, Duesenberg, and Hudson taking the track. But the speedway was destined to hold smaller events. These were the days when cities might have more than one local racetrack.

But historical events and the spirit of the track’s owner, The Cincinnati Speedway Company, combined to change all that a few months later. In early 1917 with the country in the middle of World War I, the seventh ever Indianapolis 500 was derailed. Traditionally taking place on May 30th, the race for 1917 was called off. The entire race facility had been repurposed by the military to serve as a runway and repair location for aircraft.

It was a blow to the organizers of the Indianapolis 500, the AAA Contest Board (1904-1955). The company was a branch of the American Automobile Association and held control of every single race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway between 1904 and 1955. AAA had written off the 1917 race, it just wouldn’t happen.

In downtown Cincinnati at the Cincinnati Speedway Company’s office, the Indianapolis 500’s cancellation presented a grand opportunity. The company contacted the AAA Contest Board and began persuading them to hold the race event on its regularly scheduled day, but in Cincinnati instead. The track was large, new, and most crucially available for racing on May 30th.

The folks at AAA concluded it was better to have a major racing event on the 500’s traditional day than to cancel altogether and conceded. In a one-off moment, the Indianapolis 500 race was essentially transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio, where it was marketed as the 2nd Annual International Sweepstakes Race. Known locally as the Sharonville Sweepstakes, the race was held on Decoration Day (now called Memorial Day), May 30th, 1917.

The race would be shorter than the inaugural race the prior year and half the length of the 500, as it was capped at 250 miles. Beginning at 2:30 PM that day, the race was prominently advertised as an AAA Championship Award Event. Admission was $1.50 ($40.91 adj.).

With AAA on its marketing and a May 30th date that conveyed the event was a stand-in for the cancelled Indianapolis 500, the race drew a huge crowd. While an estimated 85,000 people attended the 1916 Indianapolis 500, about 65,000 made their way to Sharonville in 1917 for the 2nd International Sweepstakes at the Cincinnati Motor Speedway. It’s quite an image to think of that mass of people in an area of roughly 300-500 residents.

The teams from Indianapolis made their way to the podunk Sharonville track, assuredly quite a journey from most places in the age before highways. Racing teams were sponsored by the likes of Packard, Peugeot, Delage, Hudson, Mercedes, Detroit Motors, and Frontenac Motors. There were 36 total teams at the track. Of those 27 raced, 2 failed to start, and 7 failed to qualify. 

Eleven teams completed the full 125 laps of the race, while the remainder had various mechanical issues and did not finish. Top speeds on the wood boards ranged from 100 to 107 miles per hour. There were some surprises in the grid, as the pole position Packard driven by Ralph DePalma failed after 75 laps with a broken radiator. One of two Stutz cars didn’t finish, and neither did Mercedes. The latter threw a connecting rod.

Within the top 10 there was a Peugeot, a Delage, a Stutz, three Deusenbergs, two Hudsons, and two Frontenacs. The winner in the number 1 car was Mr. Louis Chevrolet, who founded his namesake car maker in 1911. The prize was an impressive $12,500 ($340,899 adj.). Chevrolet established Frontenac Motors (1915-1923) as a joint venture between himself, an Indianapolis-based car dealer named William Small, and the president of Zenith Carburetors (now Zenith Fuel Systems, part of Bendix), Victor Heftler.

The company focused solely on creating high-performance cars for use in major AAA events across the country, including the Indianapolis 500. Louis’s brother Gaston took home the bronze trophy driving the other Frontenac, number 24. Silver went to Hudson, and driver Ira Vail.

It was a glorious moment at the track, but the success would prove to be short-lived. After just three years, the wood of the track was already experiencing degradation and failure from exposure to the elements. Additionally, one of the turns was damaged by a fire during a race. Rather than refit the track, it was dismantled in 1919.

The wood boards from the track were put to immediate use in the war effort, as they were shipped to Chillicothe, Ohio to build the structures of Camp Sherman. Sherman was a training camp that operated in the area until 1921. The track site itself would be put to use again later, as the Coney Island Speedway which operated between 1928 and 1935. 

Today there remain just a few photos of the event, and piecemeal information scattered across the Internet. The Indianapolis 500 organization skips over 1917 since the namesake race wasn’t officially held. The site of the track is now covered with businesses, or the I-275 loop where it intersects with I-75. The First National Bank building which housed The Cincinnati Speedway Company is now known as the Fourth and Walnut Center and houses a 280-room hotel and 16 high-end apartments. The race where a wooden track in Cincinnati stood in for the Indianapolis 500 is just some Abandoned History.

[Images: The Cincinnati Speedway Company, Art Institute of Chicago]

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