History The End Of The Moody Mile (The Mile Oval at The N.Y.S. Fair Grouds)

Thank-You for posting that.

 

1964 State Fair Start, John McArdell, Cliff Kotary and Dick Emerson anticipate the green



Photo from the Mid-State Stock Car club web site

 

Not only on the AMA National Champion tour schedule over the years but also that of the WOO winged sprint cars. I don't have the exact years for either, sorry.

Ed

 

Yes, the W.O.O. stopped running there some time in the late 80's (?), because it was to fast!

 

1995 was last time for Sprint Cars..... Billy Pauch ran 153 mph I believe to set the speed record.....
Driving Zemco's car

 

Thank-you I edited my last post

 

This is an early photo of the track.

Note the lagoons in the infield.


Photo from Syracuse Scrapbook

 

Good old days,sadly they are a thing of the past. HRP

 

The 'Dueces Wild' coupe, was driven by both Bill Blum and Pepper Eastman




Nolan Swift in the '10 Pins' has just claimed a checkered flag, 1956



Photos Mid-State Stockcar Club web site

 

Larry Nye wins the NYS Fair Race in Ray Kennedy's '34 Pontiac.



Photo Midstate Stock Car Club

 

Moose Carey in action at the N.Y.S. fairgrounds.








Photos Midstate Stockcar club

 

One of my favorite tracks to see & read about that now I won't get to visit, makes my stomach turn. . Way to many tracks closing in this current economy. Flux

 

Syracuse - Don Diffendorf N.Y.S. Fair win, 1969.



Photo Mid-State Stockcar Club web site

 

http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.aspx?RacerID=308

Searched AMA and the last race I could find was in 2006, and that got canceled due to rain and apparent poor planning.

 

Kenny Robets at Syracuse in '75

From Stu's Shots <http://stusshots.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-hail-king-happy-birthday-to-kenny.html>

 

Thank-You, we never knew that the A.M.A. ran the mile.

Always into auto racing working and in my dad's case building cars and of course watching.

Never got into motorcycles.

 

This is from the Mid-state stock car club web site and Jeff Ackerman-

NY STATE FAIRGROUNDS
SPEEDWAYSYRACUSE, NY.HOME OF THE "NY STATE FAIR CHAMPIONSHIP"
These photos have been sent by Sandy Swift Downey of Moorseville, North
Carolina and depict her father, 3 time NYS Fair Champ Nolan Swift during his
championship run from 1956 through 1958. Sandy relates:
Jeff –
Well, I am going to attempt to send you some pictures and articles from the
1956 -57 era. You should recognize Bill Wright in some of the pictures. The
driver in the grey Sears and Roebuck work clothes is my father! Most of the
pictures are from the NYS fairgrounds. The last few are from Oswego
Speedway from the same time frame.
I really have enjoyed browsing your website. If you have any questions please
feel free to contact me. Sandy

Many thanks to Sandy for these great pictures - enjoy!

 

Mid State Runners at the mile



Photo Mid State car club

Turn two pileup at the NYS Fair in the early '60s.



Photo- www.jakessite.com

 

It's official-
Cuomo to tear down 107-year-old NYS Fair racetrack



















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Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo makes a major announcement of new improvements to the fairgrounds, Sept. 1, 2015. Dennis Nett | [email protected]
Dennis Nett | [email protected]
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By Teri Weaver | [email protected]
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on September 01, 2015 at 9:47 AM, updated September 01, 2015 at 1:45 PM
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NYS FAIR 2015

• Canceled concerts at the NYS Fair: Rare, but not unheard of
• Rapper Snoop Dogg's concert at NYS Fair canceled
• NYS Fair: $20M expo center, bigger Midway, RV park to replace racetrack, Grandstand
• NYS Fair: Breast cancer patient comforts Cuomo in emotional scene
• 9 questions with The Oak Ridge Boys prior to today's Chevy Court show

All Stories


GEDDES, N.Y. – Gov. Andrew Cuomo will raze the grandstand and century-old racetrack at the New York State Fair.

Cuomo announced the expected news this morning at the New York State Fair as part of the state's $50 million investment into the fairgrounds.

"We're going to make up for lost time," Cuomo said about the investment at the fairgrounds. We're going to make the fair a complex that generates jobs and activity all year long."

Super DIRT Week, a week of races that drew thousands of spectators to the fairgrounds each October, will stay in Central New York but move from the fairgrounds, Cuomo said. The state signed a 10-year contract with the promotors, and will provide Super DIRT Week with a $250,000 grant.

Cuomo declined to say where Super DIRT Week will go, saying that will be announced later.

DIRT racing fans objected earlier this year when officials first began talking about moving Super DIRT Week from the fairgrounds to make way for new facilities to host bigger horse shows.

The state fair concerts will be moved from the grandstand to the new Lakeview Amphitheater on Onondaga Lake, Cuomo said.

His plans also include a new $20 million, 110,000-square-foot NYS Expo Center, a world-class equestrian center, a new $4 million RV park and a new entry way.

Chevy Court will also get a $4 million upgrade to improve it as a venue for free concerts.

Plans also include a new entry way at the fairgrounds, with a new streetscape on State Fair Boulevard.

The new expo center would be able to handle conventions of 4,500 people with 400 booths. Or it could host a 130-horse event, with 2,000 spectators, Cuomo said.

Demolition at the fairgrounds will begin this fall. The new Chevy Court, entryway, midway area and RV park should be built by the 2016 fair. The new exposition center will be finished in time for the 2017 fair, Cuomo said.

 

Syracuse Programs



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Sad news. :-(

 

Place of 'mystery, lore and legend': In farewell to Moody Mile, where is deep respect?



The alpha and omega of automobile racing at the New York State Fair may well have come from the same Albany office.

The beginning: The Onondaga Historical Association has a letter in its files dated June 12, 1900, in which Timothy Woodruff — lieutenant governor to Theodore Roosevelt — urges Frederick C. Stevens, a future state senator, "to get up an automobile race for the State Fair."

If "one bigger than any other so far attempted could be gotten up," Woodruff wrote, "it would arouse a good deal of interest and lead to much free advertising in the newspapers of the Fair."

In 2015, columns like this one are still proving his point.

Woodruff wrote the letter less than a month after the state went to bid for a new $10,000 dirt track at the fairgrounds. Automotive technology was in its infancy, but his wish came true in a big way: Within three years, there'd be auto racing at the fair, racing that soon grew into world-class competition. Over more than a century, a collection of driving legends would find triumph — and sometimes tragedy — on what's called the "Moody Mile."

Auto racing at the state fairgrounds, 1911.Onondaga Historical Association | Submitted image
As for the track's goodbye, that arrived Tuesday. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a news conference at the Empire Room, spoke of a "reimagined" fairgrounds as another step toward Upstate revival. He made a quick and fleeting reference to removing the grandstand and track, part of a $50 million plan that would include such attractions as a new exposition center and expanded equestrian facilities, while many big state fair shows move to the new amphitheater that opens tonight.

Cuomo would later emphasize that Super DIRT Week, a series of major dirt races held each October at the fairgrounds, will be moved to another location in Central New York. There was no talk of the economic reasoning for tearing up the track, and maybe — at some point — Cuomo and his staff will explain in detail why they feel racing doesn't fit into what the governor envisions as "a year-round, premier, multi-use facility."

In any event, the decision is made. Yet before bulldozers plow up the mile, it seems as if someone ought to say what went unsaid at that news conference. In the words of Brian Boettcher, an author and historian who has written extensively about the Indianapolis 500:

"In a sense, I see this like tearing down Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds," he said of the mile, comparing it to lost ballparks that retain a kind of spiritual power. "People don't realize how much history is associated with this (track), not just sporting history but technological history and social history as we made the transition out of an agricultural society.

"There is a respect due for what happened, especially on these major tracks, where people risked their lives and (sometimes) lost their lives."

The Syracuse racing legacy, once you look back, is staggering. Gary Spaid, an Upstate racing historian, can tell you about such DIRT racing champions as Jack Johnson and Brett Hearn and their triumphs at Syracuse, or how Indianapolis legends Al Unser and Mario Andretti battled on the oval in 1974, or about the exploits of Steve Kinser, a monumental figure from the World of Outlaws, who was always a leader in "some of the scariest races you'll ever see" at the fairgrounds.

The loss of the mile, Spaid said, "is a big thing, a big chunk of Northeastern racing history going right out of there."

Tony Bettenhausen: National racing champion and three-time winner at the state fair was involved in one of the great finishes, ever, at the Moody Mile.Onondaga Historical Association | Submitted image
The tragedies included the death of the great Jimmy Murphy, who in 1921 won the French Grand Prix, then came home in 1922 to win the Indianapolis 500. On Sept. 14, 1924, he was battling for the lead in a race at the fairgrounds when his car hit the inside rail, and he was killed. That was 13 years after Lee Oldfield's vehicle flew into the crowd, killing 11 people in one of American racing's worst disasters.

Those deaths, Boettcher said, give the track a solemn resonance that goes beyond mere sport. But the year-to-year chronology more often involved celestial racers in great duels, before big crowds. An example: On Sept. 10, 1960, Bobby Grim held off Tony Bettenhausen, a former national champion, to capture the 100-mile "big car classic" at the state fair.

The race was decided by about 10 feet, costing Bettenhausen — who died a year later, at Indianapolis — his chance for a fourth win at the fairgrounds.

In third place, behind the leaders: A.J. Foyt.

All of that, in Syracuse. Compelling racing rolled on, in a different form, once Glenn Donnelly brought his DIRT racing championships to the Moody Mile, in the 1970s.

"Oh my God," Spaid said. "There were so many great events."

Racing historian Gary Spaid watches a race at Rolling Wheels: Saddened by the loss of racing at the Moody Mile.Stephen D. Cannerelli | [email protected]
He said the mile is one of the five remaining mile-long dirt tracks in the nation. While Boettcher said he understands that "time sometimes overtakes these places," the reverence in his voice when he speaks of racing in Syracuse is exactly what was missing from the governor's news conference Tuesday morning.

Boettcher's emotion is certainly intertwined with recognition for some of the biggest names in the sport. Still, he and Spaid also pay homage to the legion of everyday drivers and mechanics who routinely go out to the garage after getting home from their day jobs, who toil over car engines until the middle of the night.

They do painstaking tasks of magnificent precision in pursuit of the same October dream:

Going to Syracuse.

Sometimes, as night fell during Super DIRT week, you'd see reverent fans making their way out onto the quiet oval, walking the track and leaving their footprints in the dirt, the way a kid might walk the grass in center field in Yankee Stadium.

Maybe state administrators are somehow right. Maybe the world has changed and they can show us, on paper, why the numbers dictate that racing at the fairgrounds has to go.

But it should not go as some shrug, some news conference afterthought. The Moody Mile is a gritty and unadorned monument to the essential nature of American auto racing, "a place of mystery, of lore and legend," as Spaid put it beautifully.

Upstate revival? This track cuts deeper. Guts and dust, alpha and omega, it's Upstate soul.

By Sean Kirst

 

A really good video with Syracuse history-

 

Last Super D.I.R.T. week at the fair grounds started today.

They are going to be 40 historic stockcars on display. Most with Syracuse history.

Any other H.A.M.B. members going?

 

Get some nice pics of Buzzie's coupe the best dirt mod ever!

 

The last sunrise on Super D.I.R.T. Week-