Racing in the Capitol City: Benning Race Track
Washington had its own early racing oval at Benning. It opened as a horse track in 1890, drew the sort of crowd that mixed politicians with regular race fans, and then found a second life when motorcycles, cars, and airplanes started pulling crowds in the 1910s.
Like most early motorcycle and auto racing tracks, the racetrack at Benning, Maryland started out with horses. That was the pattern all over the country. Build a good oval, pack the stands, sell the spectacle, and before long somebody with a motorcycle or stripped-down car wants to see how fast it will go.
A Horse Track Before It Became a Motor Track
The Washington Jockey Club opened Benning Race Track on April 1, 1890. It had competition right away from the tracks at Anacostia, Brightwood, and Ivy City, but Benning had location on its side. It was close enough to the city to pull Washington crowds, and far enough out to feel like a day at the races instead of another afternoon downtown.
Within a few years, Benning had become one of those places where Washington society liked to be seen. Race days brought politicians, judges, well-dressed families, working men, gamblers, and everyone else who wanted an afternoon around fast horses and money changing hands. The grandstand could have congressmen and regular race fans looking over the same rail.
The betting had a reputation, too. The old accounts talk about shady practices around the track, which is a little rich considering how many public servants were happy to spend time there. Benning was not some backwoods fairground. It was a known Capitol City amusement, and that put it right in the sights of the reform crowd.
One story that has always stuck to Benning involves Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, who was photographed placing a bet at the track. Roosevelt did not care for that kind of publicity, which says a lot about the awkward spot Benning occupied. The racing was fashionable, the betting was public, and the politics around it were getting hotter every year.
The horse side had real talent, not just social color. Jockey Walter Miller, one of the best riders of his day, swept all five races at a Benning meet in 1906. Two years later, Congress moved against race betting in the District, and the horse racing era at Benning was finished by April 1908.
The Track Gets Loud
Once the betting money was gone, the track was too useful to sit empty. The grandstand, rail, dirt oval, and open grounds were already there. By the 1910s, motorcycles and automobiles were running at Benning, giving Washington a front-row seat for a new kind of speed.
That is the part that makes Benning stand out. The place was not built for motorcycles, but a one-mile horse oval was still a tempting piece of ground for early racers. These were not smooth modern tracks with soft walls and controlled access. They were rough dirt ovals, wooden rails, packed stands, and riders leaning into machines that were still evolving fast.
Benning sat in the same speed-hungry world that produced board-track racing, but it was not a wooden motordrome. It was a horse track pressed into gasoline service. That difference gave the racing a different look: dust instead of planks, broad turns instead of steep timber walls, and a crowd that still remembered when the same oval belonged to thoroughbreds.
Decoration Day races in 1912 put motorcycles and motor cars in front of Washington crowds, and the photographs from that period show the track doing exactly what promoters wanted it to do. The racers had room to wind up the machines, the spectators could see the action, and the old horse-racing plant had a new reason to stay open.
Cars, Airplanes, and the Same Old Dirt
Automobile racing came along with the motorcycles. By the mid-1910s, Benning was hosting auto meets, and period photos show big early race cars working around the turns. These were tall, stripped-down machines, closer to touring cars with the excess peeled off than later dirt-track specials. On a horse oval, they must have looked wild.
The same grounds also pulled in aviation. In May 1911, Glenn Curtiss and Lincoln Beachey were tied to a flying program at Benning, and airplane exhibitions fit the place perfectly. Before airports became ordinary, a big open track with a crowd already trained to pay for speed was a natural stage for flying machines.
Benning never belonged to just one kind of racer after the horses left. Motorcycles, automobiles, bicycle events, and flying exhibitions all used the same basic attraction: a big oval on the edge of Washington where people could watch speed up close.
The Capitol City Crowd
Benning’s crowd was part of the show. Washington society liked it, politicians used it as an escape, and ordinary fans filled the stands for racing, betting, noise, and dust. The phrase “presidents and plumbers” gets at the mix pretty well. Benning had enough polish for the social pages and enough action for the working crowd.
That mix also explains why the track could not dodge politics forever. Gambling made horse racing profitable, and gambling gave reformers the lever they needed. Ministers, temperance women, and anti-betting politicians kept pressure on the sport. When Congress shut down race betting in the District, it did not just trim the purses. It cut the business model out from under the track.
The motorsports years kept Benning alive, but they could not recreate the horse-racing economy. The crowds still came for the spectacle, especially on holidays, but the track was living off its old bones. It had the oval, the reputation, and the location. What it did not have was the gambling machine that had paid the bills.
Fire, Failed Comebacks, and Mayfair Mansions
A 1915 fire badly damaged the racing plant, and by then Benning’s best days were already behind it. The motorsports events continued through the teens, but by the 1920s the old race course was on borrowed time. Several attempts were made to bring back horse racing, but opposition from ministers and temperance women kept the horses out.
The property was sold in 1928 for $500,000 to Eastland Gardens, Inc. That was the real end of Benning as a race track. By 1942 the site was being subdivided, and the old oval gave way to Mayfair Mansions, which opened after the war as a large housing development.
One odd last chapter came in 1938, when inventor Jonathan E. Caldwell demonstrated an autogyro on the abandoned track grounds. That little detail fits Benning perfectly. A place that started with horses and later handled motorcycles, cars, and airplanes still had just enough open ground left for another machine-age experiment before development erased the racing surface.
Benning’s Place in Racing History
Benning is easy to overlook because it was not Daytona, Dodge City, or one of the famous board tracks. It did not leave behind the same kind of racing legend. But it belongs in the story of early motorcycle racing because it shows how racers used whatever tracks they could get.
Before purpose-built motorcycle speedways covered the headlines, a lot of racing happened on places like Benning: horse tracks, fairgrounds, dirt ovals, and park circuits that already had fences, seats, and a crowd. The riders brought the motorcycles. The promoters brought the handbills. The rest was noise, dust, and nerve.
The same local-racing impulse later shows up on the opposite coast at Crater Camp and around Riverside dirt tracks such as Box Springs, where riders used whatever ground and machinery they had.
That is what these Benning photographs still show. Washington’s old horse track did not stay quiet when the thoroughbreds left. For a few years, the Capitol City had motorcycles and race cars hammering around the same dirt oval, right before the city grew over it for good.