Beverly Hills Speedway - History

History

Wooden board tracks were already established in the United States prior to World War One, and such a track had already been successful in Southern California. The Los Angeles Motordrome in nearby Playa del Rey was the first-ever wooden track purpose-built for motorized competition. The Motordrome created a sensation when it was built in 1910, attracting large crowds of paying spectators for two years before it was destroyed by a fire.

The Speedway Association consisted of eleven members around a nucleus of racer Cliff Durant (son of General Motors' William C. Durant) and William Danziger of the Rodeo Land and Water Company, and included future three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer. The group purchased land from a bean farmer at $1,000 per acre (0.40 ha) in 1919 and began work once the farmer had harvested his crop.

The circular Motordrome in Playa del Rey had been built by contractor Jack Prince, a British former bicycle racer who was given the work on the strength of his experience building velodromes. Prince had subsequently built a number of oval tracks, many of which suffered from badly designed transitions between the straightaways and curves. The Association's civil engineer, Art Pillsbury, turned to Prince for consultation, found that he was a capable builder but was "quite innocent of any engineering knowledge," and so resorted to a method used by railroads, called the Searle Spiral Easement Curve, to design the track's layout and contours.

Prince and Pillsbury had set out to build the fastest race track in the nation, and they may have succeeded. At the inaugural event for the brand new facility, which was also the opening race of the 1920 Championship season, victorious Jimmy Murphy averaged more than 103 miles per hour (166 km/h) in the 250-mile (400 km) contest, a pace that would not be seen in time trials at the much larger Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1923. The race was attended by 50,000 fans.

In addition to racing, the Speedway hosted other events such as horse shows, and was used as a movie location. The Speedway hosted the opening and closing rounds of the Championship for its first three years, but would only host a single contest in 1924. The final race was held February 24, 1924, before a crowd of 85,000. On that day Harlan Fengler broke the world record for a 250-mile (400 km) race, averaging 116.6 miles per hour (187.6 km/h).

After just four years, the 70,000-seat stadium was disassembled to make room for other improvements, as the land was deemed more valuable than the track that lay atop it. The property was sold to a developer for $10,000 per acre. By 1928, the Beverly Wilshire hotel would be built on the site of the track's north-east turn. The Speedway Association would later open a new track in Culver City, just south of MGM studios.