"THE WORLD'S 1st 24-HOUR AUTOMOBILE RACE"
By: A. Micheal Knapp, 1979
Twenty-four hour motor races. Test of endurance of men and machines.
Headlights roaring out of the distance; red tail lights whining away to
pinpoints. Grime. Romance. Major repairs in minutes. Luck . Strategy.
Planning Organization. Stamina. LeMans. Daytona. Columbus.
Columbus? Yes, Columbus, Ohio! The first 24-hour automobile race was run
right here at what the "Columbus Sunday Dispatch" called "the splendid and
long-famous oval track at the Columbus Driving Park." It was a dirt horse-
racing track, and was, at the time, located on the near-east side on Bryden
Road.
The motor car itself was barely out of its infancy. Ten years earlier, the
first automobile race had been run from Paris to Bordeaux, won by a Pauhard-
Levassor by driver Boulanger at an average speed of 15 miles an hour. When
the 24-Hours of Columbus was contested, The Ford Motor Company was only two
years old, having produced an automobile only a bit more than a year
earlier.
1905. The 24-Hours of Columbus began on July 3 at 3:20 p.m. when the
secretary to Governor Myron T. Herrick fired the starting pistol, and ended
a day later, on the Fourth of July. Never before had competing drivers and
automobiles attempted a twice-around-the clock speed and endurance contest
as a world record feat, by a single car in a time trial. It had driven
1,015 miles in a day.
Four cars, one of which was manufactured in Columbus, were entered in the
24-hour race, although only three actually competed. Roy Repp, who was
scheduled to driver a White Steamer, was hospitalized for surgery the day
before the race was to begin, and the entry was withdrawn. Competing were
Charles and George Soules, Charles being the lead driver, in a Pope-Toledo
car owned by C. Edward Born; Lee Frayer, builder, of the Frayer-Miller car
of Oscar Lear; and the team of Ballenger and Feasel driving Louis Hoster's
Peerless. (Strangely, none of the newspaper accounts mention either
Ballinger's or Feasels's first name. Both were from Columbus.)
The Frayer-Miller car, built in Columbus by its driver, Lee Frayer, was the
only one of the three cars to be driven the entire distance by a single
driver. Barney Oldfield, America's most famous early race driver, drove the
Peerless for about an hour at midnight, when the race was about nine hours
old, although he was not actually entered in the long race.
ELEVEN SUPPORTING EVENTS
Oldfield and then-famous drivers Charles Burman, Earl Kiser, Dan Canary,
and others, were entered in various supporting races. There were eleven
supporting events, some run before and some run after the 24-hour main
event. One of the supporting events was the Columbus Motor Derby, divided
into two heat races and a final, all five mile sprints, for a prize of
$2,000.
One cannot help wondering what $2,000 was worth in 1905! The first heat was
won by Barney Oldfield in his Peerless "Green Dragon" with which he toured
the country giving many their first glimpse of a race car. Second was Dan
Canary in his Thomas Tornado. Oldfield covered the last mile of the five
in 55 seconds: 65.45 miles an hour. Earl Kiser, in the Winton Bullet, won
the second heat, both of which were run before the start of the 24-hour
feature race. It was a Winton Bullet, by the way, which had set the world
speed record of 68.96 mph two years earlier in Daytona Beach. It was driven
during the record-setting run by its builder, Alexander Winton.
The other race run on July 3 before the start of the 24-hour event was a
touring car "novelty race," a kind of a gimmick rally more than a true
race. The big cars started from a dead stop, engines off, loaded with
passengers. They cranked up their engines and raced around the one-mile
oval, stopping at each quarter-mile post to discharge a passenger and, on
the second lap, stopping again to pick them up! The two lap event was won
by Charles Soules in his Pope-Toledo, followed by William Frisbie in an
Oldsmobile and then by F.E.Avery (founder of what is now Avery Pontiac) in
a Franklin, another car manufactured here in Columbus, The Franklin was
disqualified however, for failing to make two of the six stops required.
On Tuesday, July 4, after the finish of the 24-hour race, the final of the
Columbus Motor Derby was held: "Oldfield's Ohio State Journal" July 5
explained the strangely staggered start of the Derby:
Oldfield started from the half mile post, Kiser from the judges' stand. The
condition of the track, hard beaten from the 24-hour race continuous
pounding, was considered too dangerous to have the men start together over
the open course.
Earl Kiser won the race, collecting his $2,000 in prize money in gold. His
speed over the five laps averaged 61.14 miles an hour.
It was revealed the next day in the Columbus papers that minutes before the
start of the $2,000 race Columbus Motor by the Franklin County Sheriff,
Oldfield's wife had filed suit against him, alleging "that Oldfield has
paid marked attentions to a woman other than his wife at the Chittenden
Hotel in this city and that they were guilty of various indiscretions on
July 1, 2, and 3 of this year."
News traveled fast in 1905! Oldfield climbed into (or "onto," as the papers
said) his car and promptly lost the Derby by a quarter of a mile.
THE 24-HOURS OF COLUMBUS
At 3:20 p.m. on July 3, 1905, the three starters in the day-long feature
race left the start line jockeying for position. The race was being run not
for prize money, as was the case for the Columbus Motor Derby, but rater
for a silver cup, valued at $500, put up by the Hoster-Columbus Associated
Breweries.
The Columbus papers assured their readers that the track would be
"sprinkled frequently," and the "Ohio State Journal" reporter described the
track in glowing terms:
The course at Driving Park has been illuminated with half a hundred arc
lamps and all preparations have been made that will be conducive to speed
and record-braking for twenty-four hours. The drivers will continue to
drive at breakneck speed from the crack of the governor's gun this
afternoon until the same hour tomorrow afternoon, stopping long enough to
take on gasoline and to replace tires burned to the thinnest fabric owing
to the terrific friction. At least that was the plan. Unscheduled stops
began soon after the race itself.
The first leader was the Peerless owned by Louis Hoster, who was also the
owner of the Columbus brewery which put up the trophy for the race. Shortly
before the end of the first hours, however, the Peerless blew a tire, as it
was pitting, causing the car to smash through the wooden fence and then
into a water barrel. The impact sheared off the car's starting crank and
destroyed the radiator, and repairs started immediately.
The George Saules Pope-Toledo immediately took over the lead, and within an
hour had a similar mishap of its own. Soules couldn't have planed his
accident better if he had tried: he would up with an advantage to the USAC
everyone-pit-during-the yellow drill. The Pope-Toledo had tire problems,
too, and as it exited turn two, a tire exploded, causing the big car to
veer into the outside fence. It chewed up more than 100 feet of fence
before flipping into a ditch.
The COLUMBUS EVENING DISPATCH headline for July 4 reads: "Pope Toledo Car
Crashes Into Outside Fence; Is Practically Rebuilt in Few Minutes." The pit
stop must have been amazing to watch! "The frame was straightened, a new
radiator was installed and a new set of wheels put on and everything
adjusted for more record breaking time in sixty short minutes."
When both the Peerless and the Pope-Toledo re-entered the tack about 10
p.m., the Pope-Toledo was still in the lead by 50 miles. Charles Soules,
who earlier had won his heat of the Columbus Motor Derby, and who would
complete in the final after the 24-hour race was over, took over the
driving chores from brother George after the accident.
Ballinger wasted no time, however, and began whittling away at the Pope-
Toledo's lead narrowing it to within seven miles by 9:00 p.m. The Frayer-
Miller's luck did not last: At 9:20, a stone thrown up from the dirt
surface ripped three teeth from the main gear, and the camshaft was bent in
the process. The car was towed to the owner's garage and the repairs were
made, but the car was not able to re-enter the race until nearly 4 a.m., by
which time it had lost 250 miles.
The first half of the "great race" was run in record-breaking time, the
cars averaging six miles per hour faster than the time-trial record set
earlier. Due to the length of time needed for repairs, however, the race
ended well within the world record for distance covered.
An interesting sidelight is that the Frayer-Miller car, built in Columbus,
was the first air-cooled automobile built in the United States, and was the
only one in the race. Skeptics did not think the car had any chance at all
of finishing the race, figuring that it would burn itself up before the
halfway better shape at the flag than either of its rivals, and it not been
for the time lost replacing the cam, the car would probably have won.
A crowd of 15,000, not bad for 1905, watched the finish of the 24-hour race
on the afternoon of July 4. The distinction of winning the world's first 24-
hour automobile race went to the Soules brothers and their Pope-Toledo,
which covered a distance of 828.5 miles. Second, with 728.6 miles
completed, was the Frayer-Miller car, which had made up 150 of the 250
deficit it had at 4 a.m. The Peerless finished last, only two miles behind
the second-place car.
An endurance race today in which the entire field crosses the finish line
under their own steam would be a rare occurrence indeed!
The world's first 24-hour motor race ended with another record-book note:
the world's first protest filed in a 24-hour race! There is nothing new
under the sun, as they say, and the protest is as old as racing itself.
Both Louis Hoster and Oscar Lear, entrants of the second and third-place
cars filed a protest claiming that the Pope-Toledo was a ringer: a special-
built racing car actually owned by the factory, and not by its entrant.
The protest was rejected, but the news article do not mention whether the
$10 fee was returned.
In the supporting races following the end of the 24-hour event, Lee Fryer,
driving the same Frayer-Miller car he had just driven in the 24-hour race,
won the "three-mile open," beating two Franklins. In the next race, a five-
mile handicap, Frayer placed second to Hoster's Franklin, followed by two
other Franklins and an Olds. The five-mile motorcycle race was won by
George Stream, racing and Indian.
Thus Columbus, Ohio deserves a place in the annals of motorsport history
along with LeMans, Daytona and other 24-hour race venues.
Editor's note:
The article was submitted by Randy Holton. Copyright belongs to the
writer: A. Micheal Knapp who wrote the Columbus story in 1979.
