Speedway, Indiana

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not inside Indianapolis. Rather, it is part of Speedway, Indiana, a 4.79 square mile independent town surrounded by Indianapolis.
 
Carl Fisher and Jim Allison had a serious problem and they knew they needed to act. Their company, Prest-O-Lite made the original source of power for reliable automobile lights with canisters filled with the highly explosive acetylene gas. The company advertised that it was the “World’s Largest Maker of Dissolved Acetylene.” They had charging plants not only in Indianapolis but also in seventeen other cities and branch stores throughout the United States with various foreign agencies located in Vancouver, Calvary, Mexico City, Sydney, Tokyo, Yokohama, Honolulu, Manila, and San Juan. The problem was that after three explosions at their Indianapolis facilities, one of which destroyed a nearby fire station and did serious damage to St. Vincent's Hospital, they were under great pressure to move outside of the city limits. At the same time, Prest-O-Lite was experiencing great growth and Fisher and Allison were unsure how long the facility would be able to support the operations.
 
Quietly, they had Lem Trotter, an Indianapolis realtor, buying property surrounding the Indianapolis Motor Speedway through Globe Realty so that the purpose would not be known. Their plan became known when Carl Fisher told Indianapolis journalist William Herschell that he had a dream for an industrial town.
 
“I’m working on a new idea, Bill. The automobile is at the dawn of a great development. Airplanes are in their infancy but you will live to see them familiar travelers across the sky. We are coming into a fast moving age and the old horse can’t go the pace. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to build a horseless city just opposite the Motor Speedway, an industrial city devoted to the motorization of all traffic? Electricity and gas would be the motive powers. Every business house, industrial plant and home would have the most modern equipment. The homes would be homes and not the type of shacks that usually infest an industrial center.”
 
Once the property was purchased, Trotter was charged with laying out the town. After taking a drafting course, he laid out Speedway according to a block pattern very similar to that of Indianapolis. The primary east-west thoroughfare, 16th Street, had a width which matched that of Washington Street, the main east-west thoroughfare in downtown Indianapolis.
 
Speedway developed as Fisher had dreamed. Prest-O-Lite relocated to a new 300,000 square foot building facility in 1913.  Shortly thereafter, Electric Steel Company started operations in Speedway.  Team Speedway, a racing team founded by Fisher and Allison in 1913, relocated to Main Street in Speedway from downtown Indianapolis in 1917. To support the Team Speedway and sister racing team Prest-O-Lite Team, Allison founded a high-end machine company which became Allison Engineering. This company was purchased after Allison’s death in 1928 by General Motors and became Allison Transmissions and Allison Engines (now Rolls-Royce).
 
Today, Speedway, Indiana, is a thriving community of approximately 12,000 residents. It has four elementary schools which pay homage to the founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Carl G. Fisher, James A. Allison, Arthur C. Newby, and Frank H. Wheeler), one middle school and a high school which in 2020 was named one of Indiana’s eight Blue Ribbon High Schools. The town also has two public parks with over 25 acres, the B & O walking trail and various playgrounds, and sports facilities.
 
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