Waterford Speedbowl

Connecticut

Three weeks after opening in 1951, the Waterford Speedbowl shut down because it was choking its own spectators with dust.

racinghistorical

The track opened on April fifteenth, nineteen fifty-one, as an oval of crushed blue stone. Bob Swift won the first event. Then came the problem nobody had planned for. Every time the green flag dropped, the cars kicked up so much dust that the people in the stands could barely sit through a race. After three weeks, the owners gave up and closed. About a month later it reopened with an asphalt surface, and asphalt it has stayed ever since. The owners were a group of local businessmen, including two sets of brothers. Their race director, John Whitehouse, wintered in Florida and then came north each spring to live in a house on the Speedbowl property for the season. He held the job into the early nineteen seventies. The track has run every season since that dusty first month.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
After 3 weeks of operation, the dust created during green flag segments of racing became a nuisance to spectators. The track closed for about a month and re-opened as an asphalt oval, which it remains today.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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