Butte, America’s Story Episode 178 - Bicycle Racing
Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m your host, Dick Gibson.
In the 1890s, one of the many sports rages was bicycle racing. The first dirt tracks were unsatisfactory for both competitors and viewers, and in 1887 the first wooden board “saucer” was constructed in Omaha.
Architect T.O. Angell, a bicycle rider in Salt Lake City, was involved in the construction of the Salt Palace saucer as well as the first one in Los Angeles, and in 1901, he came to Butte to supervise the construction of the Butte track, a circular structure containing over 212,000 board feet of lumber and seating 4,600 spectators. The $10,000 building contained nine laps to the mile and was located on the north side of Park Street, between Arizona and Ohio Streets.
The Butte saucer had banked sections with a pitch exceeding 42 degrees – the steepest bicycle track in the world, which also “promised to be the fastest.” It attracted the attention of the Lawson Brothers of Salt Lake, among the most prominent racers of the day. John “the Terrible Swede” Lawson and his brothers Ivor and Gussie all signed to ride the Butte saucer, resulting in a falling out with their managers in Salt Lake City and apparently, within a few years, a ban on the Butte saucer by the National Cycling Association.
The grand opening of the Butte saucer on June 29, 1901, saw professional racers vie for a purse of $120, and amateurs competed for a $40 prize. Admission was fifty cents (children, 25 cents). Ivor Lawson narrowly beat out Artie Bell to take first place, setting a new world record for a one-mile course, at one minute 58.4 seconds.
Over the following two years or so, unsanctioned bike races, including a few motorized cycle races, and boxing matches took place at the Butte saucer, but the problems with the National Cycling Association together with falling attendance, led to the demise of the saucer. Butte promoters C. E. May and Jack Staver closed the facility later in 1901 because the cycling sport “was overdone and the people became tired of it and quit.” The Lawson Brothers returned to Salt Lake City.
The saucer was probably demolished by 1907 and was definitely gone by 1916, when that block of Park Street was fully occupied by at least 26 store fronts, ranging from photographers’ studios to a moving picture theater and at least three saloons. This is the block across from Sparky’s today.
As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from." Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.
