Information Sheet

 

 

R         Pyle’s International Transcontinental Foot Race.

94                    Programs, 1928-1929.

                                    One folder, photocopies.

 

 

 

These are programs from Charles C. Pyle’s first and second annual transcontinental foot races.  The 1928 race was from Los Angeles to New York; the 1929 race was from New York to Los Angeles.  Through Missouri the runners followed U.S. Highway 66.

 

Charles C. Pyle (1882-1939) was a prominent sports promoter and showman who in 1928 and 1929 sponsored professional foot races which traversed the United States from coast to coast.  Known popularly as C. C. (“Cash and Carry”) Pyle, he had fostered the professional sports ca­reers of football star Harold E. “Red” Grange and tennis player Suzanne Lenglen.  The foot races were intended to be profitable affairs, but neither contest proved to be very successful, and the se­ries was halted after the “second annual” event.

 

The 1928 race departed Los Angeles in early March.  It soon earned the sobriquet, “Bunion Derby,” as the hot desert roads quickly eliminated more than half of the international field.  Fol­lowing old U.S. Route 66, the troupe crossed Missouri late in April.  Averaging about forty miles per day, 55 of the 199 starters finished in New York on 26 May.  The winner was Andrew Payne of Claremore, Oklahoma.

 

In late March 1929 the second race started from New York, to garner more publicity and avoid another early burnout in the desert.  This year a vaudeville show accompanied the cara­van, performing in a tent erected at the site of the next overnight stop.  Essentially retrac­ing the previ­ous year’s route, the runners crossed Missouri, again on old Route 66, in late April and early May.  However, the promotion was a financial disaster, and only nineteen rac­ers finished the ultra-marathon in Los Angeles on 18 June.

 

The programs, sold prior to the caravan’s arrival in each town along the route, de­scribe the itinerary, praise C. C. Pyle’s brilliant entrepreneurship, provide background infor­mation on foot racing, and provide small photographs and thumbnail biographies of the con­testants.

 

 

Shelf List for this collection
Index cards for this collection
Questions? Use our Researcher Registration Form
Return to WHMC-Rolla's home page.