Cactus Derby Entry List

This content was recovered from Barney Oldfield's personal scrapbook, which is a very disorganized collection. While there is no record of the newspapers that originally published the articles, they are most likely from Los Angeles where the topic, the 1914 Los Angeles-to-Phoenix (Cactus Derby) off-road race.
 
The most obviously useful piece of information is an entry list of the competitors, but the article it supports provides a nice sense of background on how people of the day percieved the relative strengths and weakness of the entrants, both cars and drivers. Oldfield always captured the attention and the imagination of the public and the news reporters. Simplex driver and defending champion Olin C. Davis was seen as his primary rival. Oldfield drove the same Simplex in the race the previous year. A second, truncated article has some interesting information on the perception of Firestone tires over the extremely rough terrain - and a very positive perception it was.
Leon Settler mentioned.
 

AttachmentSize
Cactus_Derby_EntryList.pdf849.55 KB