Wonderful gallery of board track photos
Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 8:00 PM 
Famed racer Jimmy Murphy won a 1920 race at the Fresno board track.A Photobucket user who goes by the handle carl44s has posted a wonderful gallery of photos documenting the board racetracks that popped up throughout the United States in the early 1900s.
If you've never heard of board tracks, they were just that: racetracks constructed entirely of wood. The picture above shows how the tracks were constructed, and others at the carl44s gallery show steep banking (such as this one from Beverly Hills and this one at Atlantic City). Some were more than one mile long. Just think of the wood involved in the construction.
Check out the steep banking on the board track at Charlotte that opened in 1924.High maintanenance costs and fire were the big reasons these super-fast tracks didn't last very long. I recall seeing some footage in which a carpenter was trying to repair a section of track during a race, sticking his head above the track, then ducking back underneath as cars passed.
If you have a bit of money, I highly recommend Dick Wallen's book "Board Track Guts Gold & Glory." It's now out of print, so used copies cost more than the original price but it's the best racing book I've ever read, and on a subject most people know little or nothing about.
