1909 Cobe Cup Race

Cemetery turn in Lowell	Newspaper advertisement	1st turn in Lowell
"S" curve near cedar Lake	Hotel Binyon	Louis Stang
Chicago Auto Club Grand Stand	at South St. in Crown Point	sharp turn into South St.
Double Reverse Curve	The northwest corner of the route	Ray's Corner, Cedar Lake
Entering Lowell's business district	Lowell Public Square	along the route
along the route	Ray's Resort	Ray's Resort
The winning car	Map of the route

A copy of the following newspaper article, hand-identified as a 1953 Star reprint, was found in a scrapbook from Town Historian Richard Schmal:

Cobe Race Program Settles Many Questions, Arguments

STAR

Business men on the square recalled the June 18-19 racing days and the weeks of preparation before them with a great deal of pleasure.

Mrs. Gormley writes, "My husband and I were living on the Charles Bailey farm in West Creek Township, where Ray Bailey now lives. We drove a horse and buggy to the Al Davis place a short distance west of the southeast corner of the race course. It was the south end of the Nine-Mile stretch and a very good place from which to watch proceedings, as the yard was somewhat higher than the road and shady. (In spite of the shade I acquired the worst sun burn I ever had!)

"The racing cars all had to make their right-angle turn to the north and there were a few hair-raising skids."

Mrs. Gormley's program preface starts this way: "The Cobe Trophy automobile race is one of the three great auto events of 1909, the others the Gidlen tour in the summer and the Vanderbilt Cup race in the fall."

A map of the course on Page 6 of the souvenir clears up any doubt about the location of the official stand and the route through town. Quoting Harvey Schmal of Schmal and Seberger Hardware, "I just came in to tell you that 'Chuck' Schmal is 'all wet' on the location of the Cobe Race grandstand. It was down the Nine-Mile stretch on the east side of the road where Bill Keehn's and Bill Fifield's homes now stand."

An examination of Mrs. Gormley's program proves "Uncle Harvey" right and the one described by "Chuck" in last week's story as the official stand to be the one referred to in the Speed Age feature as "the pirate stand."

The "pirate stand," unless there happens to have been still another, was the venture of "Snider" Hildebrand and Fred Y. Wheeler. Attorney Herbert Johnson this week said, "I know about Fred Wheeler's stand because I worked for him as an usher for two days. We had little to do for there were few customers to usher. The announcer on the bridge at the official stand would yell "Car coming" when one of the racers would approach from the south. Five or 10 minutes might pass before another one showed up."

The Cobe race on Saturday was 402 miles long, traveled in 17 laps of the 23.6 mile course. The 236-mile Indiana race on Sunday was run in 10 laps.

August Heide tells of renting cots in the rooms above his store on one night of the race, presumably Saturday night, and of having to bury quantities of perishable food, mostly buns and hamburger, bought in preparation of a much larger crowd than finally came.

Harvey Schmal recalls that the Erie built a special spur into the field at the Bridgeport playground and ran only one special train from Chicago. Ira Cobe stayed in the Schmal home on East Joliet Street, he recalled, and had his chauffeur transport kids in the neighborhood to the stand during the preliminaries.

The souvenir program contains a history of the race, "How to Get to Crown Point," description of the course, "Crown Point and a Few of Its Crowning Points," the score card, rules and conditions, "How soldiers will guard the course," how the Vanderbilt cup was won, all about the 1909 Glidden tour, and a picture of the treacherous S-curve on the Crown Point-Cedar Lake Road.

A copy of the following newspaper article, hand-identified as being from a November 6, 1953, issue of the Star, was found in a scrapbook owned by Town Historian Richard Schmal:

Lowell Spectators Held Down South End of Cobe Race Course

Mention of the Lowell overpass came from Anna Nolan O'Mara of Lowell in a letter in which she forwarded a post card folder showing four Cobe race pictures. The first is Driver Masonville in his Corbin; the second a view of the right angle turn at the southeast corner of the fairgrounds, now eliminated for Cedar Lake traffic by angling through the woods; the third, and most interesting, of Driver Wiseman in a Stoddard-Dayton before the official grandstand. The last is of Coleman's corner, referred to then as "Turn at Ray's Road House."

Mrs. O'Mara's letter says:

Since I visited you I have thought more about the Cobe auto races. About the build-up we had before, how mother sent us to stay with Mrs. Fred Miller, the widow and friend of the family that we might witness the races. She said it would be an important date in our lives and we would hear about it in years to come.

The Miller home was on the race course a short distance south of the Cutler homestead and across from the Henry Cutler farm. We, my brothers Philip and Frank Nolan and I were driven up the road west of the course to Creston, then east to the place we were to view the racing cars come down the road with all their speed.

But more than the racing was the thrill of anticipation of the crowds expected in Lowell. People buying all the extra beds and cots to be found. The building of the overhead walkway over the race course at the Geo. M. Deathe corner in Lowell and the grandstand across from the monument. Then the day after the races when Father came home with baskets of sandwiches for the chickens from the lunch stands in town. All around, it was an important and much talked of day in history.

Last updated on May 8, 2009.

Go to Cobe Cup Race, "Pioneer History Index," for further information.
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1909 Cobe Cup Race