Indianapolis Motor Speedway 

August 19, 1909 the first racetrack was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The track was located on 328 acres of farm land, the track was made up of crushed rock and tar and it was a total disaster as it broke into pieces during the race and the led to the deaths of 6 people. The original track was a rectangular 2 1/2 mile track with 4 turns built by a local business man to be used as a testing facility for the growing automobile industry.

The thought behind the race track was that it could be used by different manufactures to challenge each others cars in a race and in turn they could see what their cars were capable of doing and encouraging consumers to come into their showrooms to see the cars up close.

Nicknamed "The Brickyard" the track's surface was replaced soon after the disastrous first race. The new track was made up of 3.2 million paving bricks that were laid in a bed of sand and fixed with motor. 

The improved Indianapolis Speedway was reopened in December of 1909. In 1911 attendance of the year round shorter races were not doing well. The track owners decided it would be better to focus on just one long race every year offering a much larger prize purse. This race was called the Indianapolis 500 and it has been running every year since 1911 with only a few exceptions,1917-1918 and 1942-1945 due to the United States involvement in World Wars I & II.

The old brick track is now just a memory the only signs that there was ever a brick racetrack is at the finish line where a three foot line of bricks are left exposed at the start-finish line.

The first winner of the Indianapolis was a driver Ray Haroun with an average speed of 74.59 mph and a time of 6 hours and 42 minutes. Ray took home the winning prize purse of $14,250.