Olympic Speedway Association collection

Collection

Identifier: 1000-036

Scope and Contents

This collection includes a piece of letterhead from the Olympic Speedway Association, a hand-drawn sign for the Evergreen Speedway and 13 photos depicting racetrack scenes including racecars, crowds of onlookers and racecar drivers. Two drivers are identified as Mario Bianchi and Panhandle Pete. The photographs do not identify the locations where the races took place so it is possible they were taken at the Olympic View Speedway, the Evergreen Speedway or other Northwest tracks.

Dates

Creation: circa 1930s

Creator

Olympic Speedway Association (Seattle, Wash.) (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open and available for use.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

The Olympic Speedway Association operated racetracks north of Seattle city limits in the 1930s. It was managed by Charles Peterson who previously operated the Northwest Speedway Association. The Olympic Speedway Association opened its first track, the Olympic View Speedway, on July 18, 1935. The 3/8 mile dirt track was located at 127th and Greenwood. Broadview residents quickly opposed the noise, dust and other disruptions caused by the speedway and brought a suit against the Olympic Speedway Association to stop operation in August 1935. The case was decided in October 1935 in favor of the residents and the track closed in December 1935. In 1936, the Olympic Speedway Association opened a new track, the Evergreen Speedway, at 125th and Aurora. This track operated through at least 1938.

Full Extent

.08 Linear Feet (1 pamphlet binder)

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Abstract

Photos and ephemera from the Olympic Speedway Association which ran the Olympic View Speedway and Evergreen Speedway in the Seattle area during the 1930s.

Arrangement

This collection was processed at the collection-level.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Collection was acquired by purchase.

Processing Information

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.