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