The first competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a national championship gas filled balloon race organized by Speedway President Carl Fisher. Fisher and his co-founders James Allison, Frank Wheeler and Arthur C. Newby were anxious to recover their investments in the Speedway. Since construction of the track did not begin in earnest until April 1909 it took months to prepare the track for motorized competition. Fisher, fascinated with aviation, sought to host the national championship balloon racing competition - and generate revenue for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Company. He formed the Aero Club of Indiana, became the 21st person to earn a balloon pilot's license in the United States and worked with mentor George Bumbaugh to develop balloon vehicles. Their craft was called the Indiana and together they survived a harrowing ride through turbulent wind currents. Check out a photo gallery of this great event elsewhere on First Super Speedway.

Bennett Cup - Balloons

While motor racing historians are familiar with the James Gordon Bennett Cup auto races at the dawn of the 20th Century Bennett's offer of a Cup by the same name for balloonists that still exists today is just as interesting.
Indy Auto Companies - January 1907

This is a set of articles providing good notes about the state of the Indianapolis market for automobiles in January 1907. All these articles were published during that month in the Indianapolis Star.
Oldfield's Indy Home - 1907

This is an interesting, small item that shows Barney Oldfield in an Indiana Automobile Company with the comment that they were the host of Barney and his Peerless Green Dragon racer when he visited Indianapolis in 1907. This ad appeared in the February 8, 1907 edition of the Indianapolis Star.
Haynes Vanderbilt Cup Ad - 1907

The ad ran in the February 8, 1907 issue of the Indianapolis Star in support of coverage of the Chicago Auto Show running that week. The ad focuses on the Haynes Automobile and its performance in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup.
Philadelphia Race 1906

Not to be confused with the Fairmount Park road race, this is very brief item reporting on a race that occurred at a local horse track near Philadelphia. A driver called "E. Wallace" is credited with breaking a record previously established by Barney Oldfield. It was a fifty mile competition and Wallace drove a Darracq racer.
Chicago Auto Show - 1907

This is a collection of articles published about the Chicago Auto Show in the Indianapolis Star from February 3 to February 13, 1907. At this time in history the Chicago show rivaled the great New York Auto Show. Due to its relatively close proximity the show became especially attractive to Indianapolis-area manufacturers and dealerships, such as the Fisher Automobile Company.
Americans in 1907

This article, published February 3, 1907 in the Indianapolis Star discusses the formation of a consortium to create a closed-loop, paved speedway on Long Island in New York. The plans at the time were were extremely vague so observers including the media made a lot of assumptions. The key one was that the course would be paved and that it would be entirely private without any public roads being used for auto racing competition.
Indianapolis Auto Show - 1907

Indianapolis trumpted its own automobile show in the early days of the 20th Century. The city's venues were not big enough to compete with New York and Chicago and, of course, the media presence in New York was unrivaled. Indianapolis tried to innovate and create more of a campus-like environment with the industry's dealers such as Carl Fisher Automobile Company and others hosting displays at their facilities.
Manufacturer's Fears

In the wake of the specator death at the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race organizers embarked on an effort to create a safer facility. This turned their focus to the Long Island Motor Parkway, a concrete stretch of highway. Despite continued promises they would have the running surface ready for an autumn 1907 race the project drug on and the event eventually had to be canceled.

This folder contains accounts of the races that occurred at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the Memorial Day weekend in 1910. All the stars of the day attended, including Ray Harroun, Joe Dawson, Bob Burman and Barney Oldfield. Harroun won events for Marmon and Oldfield set a new track mile record in his world land speed racer, the “Lightning Benz,” otherwise known as the “Blitzen Benz.” This race also offered an obstacle course promoted by the Overland Motors Company. This entailed wooden ramps and a route that took cars off the Speedway’s course, into the infield and through the drainage ditch in the southwest turn. Ernie Moross was the Director of Contests and was responsible for developing the program of events.

Birth of the Marmon Wasp

The attached articles are a nice discovery in that they are first-hand accounts of the development and testing of the first car to win the Indianapolis 500, the Marmon Wasp.