The History of Automobile Racing at Oakley, Kansas

 

 

Vic Felt

Sammy Ard

Tom Holden

Willard Prentiss

Leonard Kerbs

“Dad” Harrier

Lawrence Hughes

Leon Wycoff

     The Sixth Annual Glidden Tour of the American Automobile Association arrived in Oakley on the afternoon of July 28, 1909 for an overnight stay having come from Hugh, Colorado on their way to Salina, Kansas.  There were 30 competing automobiles and 20 chase vehicles for race officials and the press.  The most famous driver in this 18-day, 2,600-mile race was Webb Jay.

     Although that race did pass through Oakley, the first automobile race currently known to have been run at Oakley was the “Fall Speed Classic” run on Saturday afternoon, October 9, 1926.  The event was organized by Miss Murriel Keiser (1900-1994), secretary of the Oakley Advertising Club in conjunction with the Western Kansas Motor Show, an event staged to allow dealers in automobiles and motorized farm equipment from Logan, Thomas, Sheridan, and Gove counties to show off their wares.  The original plan was to hold the race on a three-mile course laid out over public roads east of Oakley.  The 50-mile race was to “start on the straight-away north of Myers corner, (go) west past the graveyard and south at the Olson corner to the Reager corner and hence east to the starting place.”  That plan apparently fell through as the race was moved to a flat one-mile dirt oval racetrack that was hastily constructed by Ernie Powell for the purpose on the Widdifield farm one mile north of Oakley.  The Western Kansas Motor Show set up on the infield of the racetrack.  Since it was primarily an advertising event, there was no charge for admission to the show or to the races:

  

  

 

 

Jake Betts

Les Suter

Roy Boggs

T. E. Russell

      Flush with the success of their first venture into automobile race promotion, an offshoot of the Oakley Advertising Club called itself the Oakley Automobile Club and scheduled another 50-mile auto race for Thanksgiving Day, 1926, this time offering a total purse of $350 and charging admission of 50¢ per person over 12 years of age.  Although this race was “run under A.A.A. rules”, it was not sanctioned by the American Automobile Association.  Foul weather is credited with keeping the starting field down to only four cars:

  

 

  

 

     Drivers and car owners got together and put on two ten-mile races on the Widdifield Farm racetrack on December 5, 1926.  Although the attendance was not announced, it was said to have been very good:

 

 

     The Arthur Radloff American Legion Post took over promotion of the auto races at Oakley in 1927:

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Bill Ratcliffe

Francis Schulze

L. E. Pickrel

J. D. Hanna

     A new one-mile American Legion dirt racetrack was built at a cost of $600 before the races in 1928 and local American Legion Post Adjutant William W. Crownover (1895-1986) assumed the roll of race promoter.  The new racetrack was located north of U.S. Highway 40 and south of the Union Pacific right-of-way southwest of Oakley.  It was moderately banked (certainly higher banked than most race tracks in the area which were built primarily for horse racing) and had straight-aways measuring 600 feet in length with curves of 2,040 feet around each end:

 

 

 

 

Rick Allen

Mickey McCormick

Ray Marcotte

Shorty Jones

Frankie Lies

Charlie Lutkie

Lloyd Walinder

Claude Ash

George Bender

     About 1946, the Oakley Chamber of Commerce started a fund drive to build Sportsman Park a block north of the railroad at the east edge of Oakley.  It was a combination facility for auto races, baseball, rodeos, and horse shows.  It had light poles with huge incandescent light bulbs and reflectors for events that were held at night.  The chamber initially raised about $12,000 in donations and had the new 1,200 seat grandstand completed by 1947.  The grandstand sat so close to the racing surface that it actually jutted slightly out into the racetrack.

     Hot Rods competed several times each summer in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the half-mile racetrack.  The races were promoted by Arnold “Blank” Blankenburg (1905-2000), president of the Oakley Chamber of Commerce under the auspices of the High Plains Racing Association (HPRA) in 1948 and 1949 and the Great Plains Racing Association (GPRA) in 1950.

     L. E. Pickrel, Jr. (1924-1969) was president of the both HPRA and GPRA while Ernie Powell served as the official starter / flagman and W. K. Carson was the race announcer.

     Motorcycles had raced as early as 1912 on an earlier racetrack on the Sportsman Park site but it is unknown if automobiles ever competed on that early racetrack.

     The hot rod races on the Sportsman Park racetrack:

 

 

 

Junior Pickrel

Bob Murra

    Engine rules that had been in place up through the 1950 racing season were eliminated for the 1951 racing season.  Unlimited engines, modifications, and fuel were allowed in the hot rods during the 1951 racing season.  An article in the May 11, 1951 issue of the Oakley Graphic stated this rule change increased the horsepower of the better engines from around 250 H.P. to more than 300 H.P.

 

 

Larry Crist

Bud Manning

     Micro-midgets and eventually three-quarter midgets raced a few times on small temporary racetracks at Sportsman Park in the early 1950s.

     In 1952, the Oakley Jaycees took over sponsorship of the auto races at Sportsman Park.  They chose to put on “big car” races sanctioned by the United Motor Contest Association (UMCA), an organization that was formed by Jack Merrick and Ernie Powell at a meeting in Oakley on January 20, 1952:

 

 

*Newspaper accounts state that “Dave Lynn” won this race but that name was an alias used by T. E. Russell when he competed in races that were not sanctioned by the American Automobile Association.

**Newspaper accounts state that “Johnny Thompson” won this race but that name appears to have been an alias used by Dave Carter when he campaigned Henry Walter “Hank” Hanestad’s #63 Offy sprint car in the Midwest in 1952.

 

K. O. Christian

Sylvus Benge

     In 1953 and 1954, the Oakley Jaycees put on jalopy races at Sportsman Park for pre-1942 stock automobiles.  These “Old Model Stock Car Races” were sanctioned by the High Plains Stock Car Racing Association (HPSCRA) and the Decatur County Racing Association (DCRA):

 

 

 

     The Sherman County Racing Association (SCRA) sanctioned jalopy races on the Sportsman Park racetrack once:

 

 

Richard Ellsworth

Mirl Barnett

       The Oakley Jaycees put on successful auto races at the Sportsman Park racetrack on summer Sunday afternoons in the early 1960s.  Total purses ranged from $375 to $1,000 with the Jaycees making money on the events too.  To date, only the following information about those has been located:

 

 

 

Bob Buchholz

Gene Potts

Orval Beckel

Charlie Hiner

Jerry Collins

Davey Ross

Bob Salem

Larry Torson

Lee Salmans

Oakley Auto Racing’s Sportsman of the Year
1961	K. O. Christian	Wichita, KS
1962	Davey Ross	Jetmore, KS
1963	Dennis Scheetz	Oakley, KS

 

 

      Late in the evening of July 14, 1963 a thunderstorm blew the roof off the Sportsman Park grandstand and caused other serious damage to the facility.  When the City of Oakley repaired the grandstand, the roof was not replaced.  That left the Jaycees with a choice of either lighting the racetrack for night racing or giving up on putting on the races.  They eventually chose the latter.

     Today, a rodeo arena stands on the site of the half-mile racetrack which is now gone.  Both one-mile racetracks are overgrown with buffalo grass and have been abandoned for decades but each of them is still quite visible from the air.

     A small racetrack was built just off of U. S. Highway 40 southeast of Oakley in 1960 and Go-Kart races were run there at least into the mid-1960s.

     Please contact Bob Lawrence if you have any additional information about any of the automobile races that have been run at Oakley, Kansas.