1895 : First gasoline-powered contest in America
In early 1895, Chicago Times-Herald Publisher Herman H. Kohlstaat announced that his newspaper would sponsor a race between horseless carriages. It would be the first race in America to feature gasoline-powered automobiles. Kohlstaat, who was offering $5,000 in prizes, including a first-place prize of $2,000, received telegrams from European racing enthusiasts and from automobile tinkerers across America. After delaying the event for several months at the request of entrants who were still working on their racing prototypes, Kohlstaat finally settled on an official race date--November 2. When the day arrived, 80 automobiles had been entered, but only two showed up: a Benz car brought over from Germany by Oscar Bernhard Mueller, and an automobile built by Charles and Frank Duryea of Springfield, Massachusetts. The disappointed Kohlstaat agreed to delay the official race yet again until Thanksgiving, but approved an exhibition contest to be run on this day between the Duryea brothers and Mueller. Enthusiastic spectators gathered along the 90-mile course from Jackson Park in Chicago to Waukegan, Illinois, and back again, and the Duryea car, driven by Frank, took an early lead over Mueller's motor wagon. However, less than halfway through the race, a team of horses pulling a wagon, frightened by the racket from Frank's noisy car, bolted into the middle of the road and the Duryea automobile was forced off the road and into a ditch. The undriveable car was taken back to Springfield by railroad, and the brothers began hasty repair work for the official race on November 28. Mueller was declared the winner of the exhibition by default, but on Thanksgiving Day he would have to face the Duryeas again, in an event that would be known as the Great Chicago Race of 1895.