I extracted this from the first issue of Throttle magazine and published in my club newsletter in 2004. I thought it might find some interest at this time.
Wanted: A Lake
With the 1941 season just a few short months away, boys of the “winter bench racing clan” are turning their thoughts toward six months of lakes meets, many of them not realizing what kind of problem faces the leaders of the various associations and owners of timing devices who have spent most of the winter worrying about a location suitable for racing.
When Western Timing Association closed its season with an invitational meet on Muroc Dry Lake, and the Southern California Timing Association ended 1940 with a race at Harper’s…that’s when the worry began.
Every attempt to regain the privilege of using Muroc for amateur racing has meet with defeat, and owners of surrounding property at Harper’s have banded together to put a stop to racing there. Rosamond, of course, is unfit.
The United States Army is the reason Muroc has been scratched off the list. As for Harper’s…it was just the childish pranks of a few nitwits who thought it smart to tear up someone else’s property that cinched that deal. But then, there’s always a few “rotten apples” in every barrel of good ones.
Throttle Investigates
Upon the good word of Friend George Wight of Bell, California, I investigated a proposition offered by a man who owns every square foot of a dry lake bed on which can be measured a course of some four or five miles.
…
All he wants to do is fence it off and charge a nominal price for each and every person who enters, whether they be spectators or participants.
If his price doesn’t get too high, the idea would be very good. First, because it would cut down the number of spectators after one or two meets, which is the one thing that seems to cause most of the trouble at every Lakes meet…
It’s not very far from Los Angeles, approximately 140 miles according to the road map I checked…
We are planning to take a Sunday off to make a special trip to this lake, named Lucerne Lake…
This appears to be the last resort to keep amateur racing and lakes meets going if what I’ve heard is any criterion.
SCTA Secretary Art Tilton has told me that a group of fellows joining together, pooled their interests, and with a total capital of some figure in the thousands set out to buy outright a three-mile strip of land that could be transformed into a neat course.
Everything possible was done to get the deed to the property or even a lease on it for the summer months, but efforts were in vain.
It all boils down to this, that should no place within 200 miles of Los Angeles be available, there will be but one thing left to do.
Everybody take a week of in the middle of summer, hire a special train to Salt Lake City, Utah, and the joint associations sponsor a gigantic three-days lakes meet on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Mike
