In 1896, the very first auto race on an oval track took place at the Rhode Island State Fair, just one year after the first city-to-city auto race in the world took place. Cars were so new, no one knew what to call them. Horseless wagons? Motor wagons? Motocycles? Electric Traps?
Episode Source Material:
- Left Turns In The Ocean State | Hemmings
- Scientific American Volume 75
- The Autocar: A Journal Published in the interests of the mechanically-propelled road carriage
- 1896 Novel Race
- My Home Track - Rhode Island and the late, great Narragansett Park Speedway - NASCAR Talk | NBC Sports
- Boston Sunday Globe Archives, Sep 19, 1915, p. 15
- Narragansett Park Speedway
- The First Automobile Races in America (Upd. Cranston, Rhode Island) - PreWarCar
- A Look Back On Rhode Island's Narragansett Park
- Chicago Times-Herald race - Wikipedia
- The Forgotten Car That Won America's First Auto Race | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
- Oval track racing - Wikipedia
- Duryea Motor Wagon Company - Wikipedia
- The Duryea Motor Wagon: There's a First Time for Everything | 2020
- Time Lapse: Turrets, tents and hippies -- where, when, what's happening here?
- History of Auto Racing
- automobile racing | Britannica
- Andrew L. Riker - Wikipedia
- History of the American Automobile - Cole's Collision Center
- Racing in America
- Automobile History.
- History of the automobile - Wikipedia
- Race track - Wikipedia
- Horseracing in the US | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
- First asphalt superspeedway track | Guinness World Records(1.366%2D,%2Fh%20(76.26%20mph).
- Riker Automobiles before they merge into Electric Vehicle Company and Columbia . . . . . .
- The day electricity led the way in the first American auto race