Monday, March 07, 2016

lesson learned from the 3rd Vanderbilt Cup, held Oct 6th 1906

Many spectators crowded the race area, and one was killed. Many tore down the barb wire fences and fenceposts designed to keep them away from the road. Some declared that the public has at all times a right to use any highway, and that no one had a right to set any highway aside for the use of a few to the exclusion of any others.

This may have had something to do with the actions of the crowd at the race.

 One result of these facts is that W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., August Belmont, L. C. Weir, Frederick G. Bourne, Colgate Hoyt, Harry Payne Whitney and others have determined to buy a right of way, and on it make the greatest speedway the world has ever known.

At a meeting of the gentlemen named a committee was requested to decide on plans for the construction of such speedway, which, it was said, should extend from New York City to the eastern end of Long Island, a distance of more than eighty miles.

It would probably lie along the southern edge of the great glacial drift and be fairly level without tight turns, which were so dangerous to the racers in the last contest. Such right of way would be private property, would have no crossing of a highway or of a railroad, therefore would be almost completely under the control of its owners.

Every rod of the way could then be walled or fenced so that neither man nor beast could trespass to risk his own life or that of a speeding driver of an automobile. As there need be no lack of money for the purpose, this speedway may be the very highest possible exhibit of man's skill in road-making. It may easily become the race-course of the civilized world,.

Good Roads magazine, Nov 1906

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