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    Watkins Glen Racing
    Watkins Glen Racing
    Watkins Glen Racing
    Ebook163 pages31 minutes

    Watkins Glen Racing

    By Kirk W. House and Charles R. Mitchell

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    About this ebook

    The war was won, the Depression was over, and Americans were back on the road. From all across the nation, sports car drivers converged on Watkins Glen to race through the gorges, hills, and village streets of western New York. Over the years, the course has evolved from its humble beginnings on streets lined with hay bales to the modern closed track that plays host to NASCAR today. Through vintage photographs, primarily from the International Motor Racing Research Center at Watkins Glen, Watkins Glen Racing chronicles the history of the track with early drivers, like Cameron Argetsinger, Phil Walters, and Dave Garroway, vintage cars, hairpin turns, and death-defying races.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJun 23, 2008
    ISBN9781439636060
    Watkins Glen Racing
    Author

    Kirk W. House

    Kirk W. House is the former director of the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. Charles R. Mitchell, a former photographer, is curator of the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society in Penn Yan. Together they have authored a dozen books with Arcadia Publishing.

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      Book preview

      Watkins Glen Racing - Kirk W. House

      them.

      INTRODUCTION

      World War II was over and fairly won. Experts had given up on Pres. Harry S. Truman’s election hopes against Thomas E. Dewey, Strom Thurmond, and Henry Wallace. The first baby boomers were learning to walk and talk. Prosperity was bursting unrestrained, and the Depression was receding into the memory of a nightmare. Americans were back on the road again, and Cameron Argetsinger had an excellent idea.

      Why not do something that had not been done since well before the war? Why not gather sports car drivers from across the country for a race? Not a race on a closed course but a race like a European grand prix... over hills, down dales, and along well-traveled streets. Why not revive American road racing?

      Argetsinger had the dream, and he had the venue. As a summer visitor and as a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, he often motored over the hills to Watkins Glen at the head of Seneca Lake. This was a village of medium size but well accustomed to crowds of visitors. They swarmed into Watkins each year to enjoy the largest of the Finger Lakes or the state park starring the spectacular glens and gorges for which the town was named.

      A month before Dewey defeated Truman (you can check the November 3, 1948, Chicago Daily Tribune, if you do not believe it), Argetsinger and others made the dream come true. The Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) joined forces to stage a new event. Argetsinger laid out a challenging 6.6-mile course. The village, towns, state, state park, and county closed their roads, while the New York Central Railroad stopped the train. The curator of the Smithsonian Institute came to announce the grand prix and junior prix, each of which Frank Griswold won in his Alfa Romeo. Ten thousand spectators cheered. Sports in America (and in the world) had a new tradition—racing at Watkins Glen.

      The races were exciting and dramatic, and the setting was exquisite. But the course was demanding, and tragedy struck twice, killing a driver in 1950 and a seven-year-old spectator in 1952. The following year a new sponsoring body, the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation, moved racing to a new 4.6-mile course on nearby rural roads. After three years of that, a closed course arose on the new site, designed in part by engineers from Cornell University.

      At 2.3 miles in length, the closed course was shorter than either of its predecessors. But designers reproduced in miniature the contours of the 1948 to 1952 route, neatly uniting the new track with its heritage.

      International and professional events began booking in, beginning with the NASCAR Grand National in 1957. Watkins Glen activities soon included the U.S. Grand Prix, which had long been a dream of Argetsinger. In 1965, drivers named Watkins Glen the best-organized grand prix in the world. Watkins also hosted NASCAR races, Indy cars, the Can-Am, Sportscar Vintage racing, and more. In 1973, five years after Woodstock, the track even hosted a summer rock concert featuring such groups as the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. That day is still vividly recalled by 650,000 attendees and shell-shocked local residents.

      In 1971, the track was completely redesigned and re-created, extending the length to 3.377 miles and upgrading visitor facilities. The greatest names in racing competed as Watkins Glen played host to Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Graham Hill, Giles Villeneuve, Geoff Bodine (a local boy who watched the races from

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