Seats Available At First Indy 500

This package includes two articles (published May 28, 1911 in the Indianapolis Star) one of which is a small, but interesting item. The main article discusses Indianapolis Motor Speedway management's efforts to guide traffic for the first Indianapolis 500 to the track and then point them in the right direction once inside the great facility. Interestingly, they created a big loop with different routes coming in and leaving. Traveling to the track, traffic - which you can imagine was an interesting mix of horse-drawn and motorized vehicles - was directed down Crawfordsville Road, and on the way back down some path they did not name that was west of the track and headed south to get to West Washington Street and back into Indianapolis. At that time, most of the traffic would source from Indianapolis, due east of the Speedway.
 
Once inside the track, the article indiicates that signs were affixed to structures everywhere to point people in the right direction. This was supplemented by announcers with megaphones. More interesting was that the article said there were 10,000 reserved seats still available in Stand C just two days prior to the race and that they did not expect them to sell out until the day of the race.
 
The smaller article noted that B.C. Fincke, an executive with the Pope-Hartford car company, said that driver Louis Disbrow's use of their race car to travel to Indianapolis from Hartford, Connecticut was all part of a plan to tune the machine. Worthy of note, too, was that the team planned to tackle the Algonquin, Illinois hill climb following the 1911 Indianapolis 500.