The Race That Revived American Road Racing

In the autumn of nineteen forty eight, a young lawyer named Cameron Argetsinger organized a road race through the streets of Watkins Glen with the sanction of the Sports Car Club of America. On October second, nineteen forty eight, the first Watkins Glen Grand Prix started on Franklin Street, ran through the center of the village, and continued out into the surrounding countryside on a course measuring six and a half miles. Spectators lined the sidewalks exactly as they would for a parade, watching the cars thread past storefronts at speed.

Frank Griswold won that first race in his Alfa Romeo, completing the course ahead of a field of sports cars brought to the Finger Lakes from across the country. The race, in the view of most historians of the sport, revived road racing in the United States after its decline during the years of the Second World War. Before the war, racing on closed public roads had a brief American tradition.

Argetsinger's event demonstrated that the appetite had not disappeared. Argetsinger had grown up in the Finger Lakes area and had been inspired by European racing traditions he admired. He won approval from the local Chamber of Commerce and the Sports Car Club of America, and the race drew thousands of spectators to the village.

The street circuit ran five times, from nineteen forty eight through nineteen fifty two, before a tragedy would force a change in the formula.