Saturday, January 9, 1915. Fifty one laps on dirt roads that are now Rosecrans, Lytton, Chatsworth, Catalina, Talbot and Cañon. All records sourced and cited.
Eddie Rickenbacker broke down on Rosecrans.
Four years later he would be the most decorated American fighter pilot of the First World War, and later still he would run Eastern Air Lines. On the morning of January 9, 1915 he was twenty four, driving a Peugeot, and his connecting rod let go somewhere on a three hundred mile race run through the streets of Point Loma.
Barney Oldfield was in that race. So was Bob Burman. Fifty thousand people came to watch.
The Exposition that paid for the whole thing got 6,112 visitors that day.
The Panama California Exposition opened in Balboa Park on January 1, 1915, and San Diego needed the country to notice. The Al Bahr Shriners put up a road race as a promotional event, got it sanctioned by the American Automobile Association as contest number 786, and hung a ten thousand dollar purse on it. Five thousand to the winner. Entry was a hundred and fifty dollars a car.
It worked far better than anyone intended.
There was no racetrack. There was no construction. The Richmond Times-Dispatch described it a month later as "a 5.982 mile circuit of ordinary dirt roads with no special construction," with "many difficult hills, sharp turns, and few speed stretches."
Here is the lap, and this is the part worth reading slowly if you live out there.
Start and finish on Rosecrans at Elliott. North up Rosecrans to Lytton, which they called the country club turn. West on Lytton into Chatsworth Boulevard and over the hill. South down Catalina Boulevard to Talbot, the Theosophical turn, named for the colony on the hill. A hairpin onto Cañon Street, then downhill through an S curve to the Roseville turn back at Rosecrans. Then a two mile straightaway to the flag.
Fifty one laps of that. Three hundred miles.
Every one of those streets is still there, under the same names. The lap takes about fifteen minutes at the speed limit.
Nineteen cars entered. Harry Grant's Sunbeam was withdrawn before the start with a cracked frame, so eighteen went.
It was a bad morning to be a connecting rod. Rickenbacker's Peugeot broke one. Fred McCarthy's Peugeot, number 9, broke one. Art Klein twisted the pinion shaft off his King at the start and was done before the first corner. Huntley Gordon blew three tires and destroyed his radiator at the railroad crossing.
The Roseville turn ate two of the most famous drivers in America. Barney Oldfield overshot it in his Maxwell and had to reverse back onto the course. Bob Burman overshot the same corner and recovered through the weeds beside somebody's house.
Jack Callaghan hit a telephone pole at the Theosophical turn. The account of it says he lost two front teeth by taking a big bite out of the steering wheel.
Earl Cooper won in a Stutz. Four hours, forty minutes, ten and eight tenths seconds, an average of 65.333 miles an hour over dirt, hills and a hairpin. Billy Carlson brought a Maxwell home second without a single stop. Tom Alley was third in a Duesenberg, Glover Ruckstell fourth in a Mercer, William Taylor fifth in an Alco.
Of the eighteen that started, somewhere between five and seven finished. The sources do not agree and we have not made them.
The winners collected at the Plaza de Panama that afternoon, in the middle of the Exposition the race had just emptied.
The trade press was unimpressed by the carnage. The Horseless Age wrote that the race "was disappointing to no one, except possibly those who came to see serious smashups."
Three independent kinds of record carry this story, which is why we can be specific about a single Saturday in 1915.
The Panama California Exposition Digital Archive holds the race file, including the course description, the finishing order, the purse, the AAA sanction number, and eight photographs taken on the day. The San Diego History Center, through Richard Amero's Exposition history, carries the fifty thousand figure, Cooper's winning average, the prize ceremony and the Exposition's own gate count of 6,112. And the Library of Congress holds the wire coverage, including a United Press dispatch datelined "Point Loma Race Course, San Diego" that ran the next morning in Keokuk, Iowa.
Three sources, three institutions, one Saturday.
This is the part that does not read like a car story.
Jack Callaghan, who hit the telephone pole, was killed at Ascot in Los Angeles one month later.
Billy Carlson, who finished second here without stopping, was killed at Tacoma on the Fourth of July. His riding mechanician, Paul Franzen, died with him.
Harry Grant, whose Sunbeam never started, was killed in October practicing at Sheepshead Bay.
Roxie Pallotti, Grant's mechanician, was killed at Ascot in May 1916.
Bob Burman, who went through the weeds at Roseville, was killed at Corona in April 1916.
Inside eighteen months.
The race was a success by every measure its organizers cared about. Fifty thousand people. National wire coverage. A world class field. There were plans to run it again the following year.
It never ran again, and the reason was not money and not scandal and not the dead.
It was houses.
Point Loma filled in. Lots sold, streets got traffic, and a neighborhood does not lend you Rosecrans for a Saturday so that eighteen men can take it at sixty five miles an hour. The course closed because people moved onto it.
That is the whole arc of San Diego real estate in one event. In 1915 Point Loma had enough roads to be interesting and few enough residents to be borrowable. Within a few years it had too many residents to be anything but a place where people live. Every corner on that lap is an address now, and the hairpin at Talbot that cost Jack Callaghan his front teeth is somebody's commute.
Current pricing, inventory and days on market for Point Loma are in the Point Loma market report, updated monthly from closed MLS sales, and the surrounding coastal communities are in Beaches and Peninsula.
How many cars finished. There are three answers in the record and two of them come from the same institution. The Exposition archive's race narrative says six. A caption on one of that same archive's own photographs says five. The Richmond Times-Dispatch of February 7, 1915 says seven of eighteen. We have printed the range and named the sources rather than picking one.
The second place driver's name and car. The results table has William "Billy" Carlson in Maxwell number 17. A photograph caption in the same archive calls him Billy Carson in car number 2, and number 2 belongs to Tom Alley's Duesenberg in that same table. We have printed the results table.
How many started. Nineteen entered. Harry Grant's Sunbeam was withdrawn before the start with a cracked frame, which is why some accounts say eighteen and some say nineteen. Both numbers are right about different moments.
More San Diego history: stories from around the county, one place at a time.