On August 19, 1909, the first race was held at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous
motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.
Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local businessmen as a
testing facility for Indiana’s growing automobile industry. The
idea was that occasional races at the track would pit cars from
different manufacturers against each other. After seeing what
these cars could do, spectators would presumably head down
to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look.
The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each
exactly 440 yards from start to finish, by two long and two short
straight sections. In that first five-mile race on August 19, 1909,
12,000 spectators watched Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer
win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The track’s
surface of crushed rock and tar proved a disaster, breaking up
in a number of places and causing the deaths of two drivers,
two mechanics and two spectators.
The surface was soon replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks,
laid in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar. Dubbed “The
Brickyard,” the speedway reopened in December 1909.
Louis Schwitzer (center) with his team.
