Buffalo Speedway

Buffalo Speedway is a street in Houston, Texas. It starts in the upper class River Oaks neighborhood on the west side of Houston at an intersection with Westheimer Road. It ends at West Bellfort Street on the southwest side. Currently the extension to Holmes Road just finished construction.

The speedway part of the name comes from a section of the road that was long and straight where it was possible to attain high speeds. When Buffalo Drive's name became Allen Parkway, the "Buffalo" name was open to use on another street. The "buffalo" part is surmised to be due to 1. popularity of the word buffalo around the time of the road's naming and 2. replacement of Buffalo Drive by the Allen Parkway. Old USGS maps suggest the existence of a race track where Buffalo Speedway would later be built. Historian and retired land researcher Ann Quin Wilson says that a speedway existed near the site of today's Lamar High School, which would have been at the intersection of Buffalo Drive (now Allen Parkway) and where the Buffalo Speedway would later be built.

The race track indicated on the 1922 map attached was a horse racing track owned by Mitchell Louis Westheimer, a German immigrant and businessman who sold that portion of his farm for the construction of Lamar High School in 1937. Since the track was built for horses and predated most organized dirt-oval motor racing in the United States, it is unlikely that the "speedway" name descended from the track itself.

Some road signs refer to it as Buffalo Spdwy with speedway taking the place of other designations like road or street.