Barney Oldfield screamed down Highway 66 and the crowds went wild....

After the race in Corona promoters of racing came up with an idea for a new road race....A road race that many people living today only think is a Hollywood Movie....But in reality, the old time racers were looking for any road surface to race on, and at the mention of a possible race from LA out to the desert communities was something that they lived for.

The final race route would take the drivers from Downtown LA along Garvey Ave, out into the open fields of the future City of Industry along a two lane dirt road called Valley High, today's Valley blvd......Then on Eastwards on today's Holt, which back then was a just completed two lane highway, all oiled paved hard packed dirt, by prisons inmates from the various area jails....As it passed through the small communities of Spadra, then Pomona it headed east again into Ontario, where the race drives would turn north on the split paved Euclid Ave.

North on Euclid, then turning east into North Ontario (Modern day Upland) out San Bernardino Road to Foothill (Route 66) and on through Cucamonga and Etiwanda heading east.

Thousands of race fans lined the streets to see there favorite drivers go by....As it was, the drivers were going so fast, that most people only had a few seconds to see them pass by.

But the race wasn't over....The final destination of the racers was Phoenix, so they had a long ways to go, and actually there were very few people around to watch the 19 drivers speed east on Highway 66....They didn't see any one till they hit San Bernardino....The racers turned north and headed up the one lane Cajon Pass, driving on the old highway 66 all of the to Needles....That's where the racers stopped for the night....the next day, 21 drivers were off and running for Phoenix....Yes, there were 21 drivers now....They seemed to have picked up a couple of scalawags in Needles.....But as it turned out, only eight of the drivers finished the race, and none of the ad ons.

What was really amazing about this race, is that it was run in the rain, at least from downtown LA all of the way out to San Bernardino....Then as the racers turned north into the Cajon Pass the heavy rain turned to snow right at the top of the pass but they still drove on....On the northern deserts the wind was blowing at about 50 mph, and still the drivers did not stop the race unless they had trouble...The weather is the primary reason only so few drivers finished the race.

The winner of the first annual Cactus Derby that year was Barney Oldfield, who at the time was the worlds best know race driver....Barney had set several records for speed, especially when he drove the first Gas powered car to 60 mph....Also in the race was another notable driver whose achievements were far in the future....Louis Chevrolet, builder of the car that still carries his name.

Another driver who was well known at the time, Earl Schnach, started the race first when he left LA, managed to make it all of the way through Cucamonga in the driving rain slipping and sliding all of the way, crashed at the top of the Cajon Pass in the snow....He was so badly injured that they had to being back down the pass for Medical attention.

Most of the people who watch the race crowded into the corners....One car doing over 60 mph in the rain, slid in the mud as he tried to make the turn from Holt to Euclid, and slid into an office building on the corner.....He missed the gathered crowd by less than ten feet....From then on race officials got the word out to the drivers to slow down when in towns and going around corners....this disappointed many in the crowd, who wanted to see the racers speed along in the mud and rain....The Daily Report reporter of that time, reported that this was the most blood thirsty crowd he had ever seen....They cheered drivers when they almost wrecked, and booed drivers when they slowed down in the heavy rain....sounds like modern day soccer fans doesn't it.

Another car, a Metz drove way to fast down Holt and hit a big dip at Vine, where the old post office was....The car went flying into the air and landed on the ground like the General Lee does in the movies....Except like in real life, the cars rear axle and tires flattened out and the driver had to give up the race just on the out skirts of Cucamonga.....He had to walk back into town to report to the race officials that his car had died and he was out of the race.

There was even a local driver, who lived in Upland...His name was Fred Wing, and he too was driving a Metz....He made it all of the way through the inland empire but his car died after making it all of the way across the desert in Prescott and did not finish the race....Louis Nikrent another local resident of the inland empire got big cheers in Ontario and booed in Cucamonga

Then the Bain of all drivers occurred in the Cajon Pass at the bottom of the grade....Cliff Durant had opened a two mile lead over the rest of the field of drivers, and got stuck at the railroad tracks as a very slow and long Santa Fe freight train slowly made its way down the pass....After sitting there for nearly 20 minutes, he was disappointed to see the rest of the field pull up behind him....As soon as the train had passed all of the drivers took off as fast as they could only to be stopped again by another train coming up the pass.....They had driven less than 400 feet in about 1 hours time....Hummm, sounds like the 405 and 5 freeways junction doesn't.

Chevrolet was in the lead in Needles but when he got gas, someone mixed water in with the gas and he went out of the race just as he crossed the California Arizona Border.....But another driver, William Durrant spotted sitting on the side of the road and picked him....He was Chevrolets partner and founder of the General Motors Corporation....The two managed to finish 4th.

The final outcome of the race, another words the winner of the race was not known for a couple of days because a couple of drivers had arrived in Phoenix in other than perfect condition....Nikrent was first into Phoenix and thought he had won the race....He had actually passed Barney Oldfield who was stuck in a muddy ditch about 20 miles out of town....But Oldfield contracted with a local farmer to have his car pulled out of the mud by a team of mules and actually finished the race about 20 minutes behind Nikrent....Barney thought he had lost the race, but was declared the winner when all of the race officials got together to compare notes and realized he had led most of the race.

Barney Oldfield was declared the winner, and after his mud encased car was washed off he took the reviewing stand along with Nikrent, Chevrolet and Durrant.

Well there you have it....The real story behind one of the wettest and craziest races ever....almost 700 miles long and sticking to Highway 66 all of the way made it another of the unique races of the world at the time....It is indeed a race of the past....The past history of the Inland Empire, as it was and never to be repeated, but still an event that was to play a unique part in the building of the Inland Empire.

Gary Hall, the ghostpainter