Drag racing through Gettysburg before there were cars
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The horses resembled harnessed dragons. With each breath exhaled through their nostrils, the horses’ breaths turned to vapor resembling smoke from fire-breathing dragons. They pawed at the snow on the street, waiting anxiously.
A sleigh with a driver sat behind each horse. The young men in the sleighs grinned at each other and at an unspoken signal, they snapped their whips and the horses leaped forward pulling their respective sleighs behind them.
While the sleighs might be typical vehicles of the day, if one of the drivers was Frank Deatrick, then he would be riding in in a streamlined speedster that would draw as many appreciative glances as a Ferrari would today on the roads of Gettysburg. Deatrick’s sleigh, though costly, was fast and designed for racing.
“Suddenly there was the thud of rapidly galloping horses’ hoofs, and homes empty along York and Chambersburg streets. Mothers dashed swiftly to make sure their children were off the street. A passing wagon drew hurriedly to the side of the road. Heads peered from doors and windows to watch the sight–Gettysburg was having another horse race,” the Gettysburg Times reported in a 1952 article interviewing “old timers” about their childhood memories 50 years earlier.
These weren’t sanctioned horse races, seeing as how the streets of Gettysburg are not a racetrack. Boys will be boys, however, and they like to race whether it’s in cars, on foot or in sleighs.
George “Pop” Hughes recalled that the boys raced from the intersection of York and Hanover streets to the intersection of Springs and Buford avenues. He’d been too young to take part in any of the races at the time, but he had enjoyed watching them and wishing he could ride in one of the buggies or sleighs.
The races didn’t last long, probably because the drivers didn’t want to be around when the police arrived. They typically raced in the morning. This was an inconvenience for residents along the impromptu racetrack, but the streets were less crowded at that hour.
The races could happen at any time of the year. If there wasn’t snow on the ground, then the drivers would race their buggies or sit astride their horses and urge them to go faster like a race jockey.
The next great love of young men—the car—was in existence, but they were expensive, undependable and few and far between. However, 1902 was also the year before the Ford Motor Company opened and the famous Model T would start rolling off the assembly line in 1908. The Model T go travel as fast as a horse pulling a buggy and the view was much better for the driver.
Because young men have a need for speed and also tend to embrace technology, automobiles soon caught on in Adams County and before long, car races through towns replaced horse races. East Berlin had its first automobile race in 1910, according to the East Berlin Historical Preservation Society.
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