On May 21, 1939, 75 years ago today, Williams Grove Speedway opened its doors for dirt track automobile racing - it's still at it, every Friday night during the season! Located just a couple miles south of Mechanicsburg, a small suburb of the Pennsylvania capital Harrisburg, which was (aptly!) named for a settlement of "Conestoga wagon" mechanics in the early 19th century, the Grove has attracted scores upon scores of mechanics of a slightly different hue to Central Pennsylvania over three quarters of a century by now - namely, Sprint Car mechanics! 
My Google Earth skills are still crap, but it's easy to find if you search for "Williams Grove Speedway", and the satellite picture will show its unusual, oblong form and the reddish clay track surface for which it has become famous. Back in 1939, the Speedway was built as an added attraction for the Williams Grove Amusement Park, which closed about ten years ago. The Park had been built by Roy E. Richwine (1889 - 1960), after purchasing the Grove in 1923 for a reported $40,000 from the heirs of Abraham Williams (1824 - 1907), who'd developed it just after the Civil War from a family picnic spot to a regular fairgrounds.
Original plans had been to open on May 14, but Richwine had to concede that date to Ralph Hankinson's Langhorne Speedway, which exercised habitual rights for its season inaugural. In any case, the real baptism had already taken place one month earlier, when Ottis Stine (1908 - 2000), a "Dutch Pennsylvanian" who'd begun his career as Otto Stein (probably his birth name) about five years earlier, took out the (Emmett) Shelley/Hal for a few test runs on the new track. Stine had secured a regular ride with Shelley during much of 1938, and it was no accident that it was this particular car which deflowered the Williams Grove soil, for Emmett Shelley was very probably the main moving force behind its conception!
A hotel operator from nearby Carlisle by trade, Emmett Shelley (1900 - 1978) had dabbled in various enterprises before taking over the family business at the Wellington Hotel in Carlisle, amongst which was a stint as the sales manager for the Payne-Knisely Motor Co. at Harrisburg, which was active in the local dirt track racing scene in the latter half of the twenties. By 1927, Shelley owned a Model T Ford racing car which he entered in races at the Harrisburg Fairgrounds in Paxtang, the area's main racing venue at the time, less than ten miles to the east of Mechanicsburg. Five years later, his "Penn-Harris Special" #18 was a regular sight at AAA events in Central Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, with local driver Harold E. Wright (~ 1908 - 1934) handling the controls. Wright was hardly an ace, but he did manage a third place finish with the car in the main event at the Flemington Fair in early September, behind Billy Winn and Chuck Tabor, and beating the likes of Vern Orenduff, Firman Lawshe, Ben Shaw, Bill Denver and Freddie Winnai.
Just a few days later, Wright was injured at the Schuylkill County Fairgrounds between Cressona and Pottsville/PA, and Shelley put another local, Howard L. Roser (1902 - 1976) in the Penn-Harris, now #45 for 1933. Like Wright, Roser was not destined for greatness, but he became a co-owner in the car, which was renamed the "Roshell Special" #38 the following year. For 1935, the team invested in one of the popular DO Hal engines and secured the services of driver William S. "Bill" Shoop (1906 - 1990) from nearby York. In half a decade of trying so far, Shoop had shown a little bit more promise than both Wright and Roser, but the real difference for the Shelley troupe was made by the step down to a newly formed independent racing club, the Central Pennsylvania Racing Association (CPRA).
Most of the area's racing folk refered to the CPRA as the "Mark Light group", after the Jack-of-all-trades who had basically ramrodded the club into existence. Light (1910 - 1975) was a driver, mechanic, car owner, race official and promoter - he'd probably go selling hot dogs in the stands between heats if he wasn't already performing every imaginable duty for the organisation! Having started racing "jalopies", mostly stripped and hot-rodded Model T Fords, on local bullrings as a support act for AAA races on the Hankinson circuit in 1933, he began leasing the fairgrounds in his hometown Lebanon, right in the middle between Harrisburg and Reading, for semi-monthly independent "outlaw" races in the spring of 1935. Soon, a small circuit developed in the area around Lancaster, with tracks in Landisville and the curiously-named Bird-in-Hand joining in, and Light's group of jalopy buddies being bolstered by "overflow" from the AAA, caused by the recent boom in dirt track racing - like Shelley and Shoop, many of the "lesser lights" on the AAA circuit were beginning to feel like mere makeweights, with no real chance of success. In practice, they would regularly tow many miles to the various area tracks, only to be "trailered" again after half an hour of "hot laps" and an unsuccessful qualifying attempt - not a good return on investment in expensive racing hardware!
The upshot of that was a resurgence of the independent clubs in the mid thirties, combined with a bit of relief on part of the AAA promoters, who really didn't need three-digit fields to make a success of their shows.
Edited by Michael Ferner, 19 June 2014 - 20:02.
