Saugus Speedway Racing Program.
Saturday, April 5, 1980.
Cover: Reproduction of cover from September 9, 1945; 24 pages.
Feature: Introducing Track Announcer 'Irish' Virgil Kilpatrick; Trophy Queen Roselyn Royce; 1979 Recap.
Photos, in order of appearance: Kilpatrick, Royce, Vince Pietrocci, Ron Hornaday Jr., Rodney Peacher, Brian Moyto, Bill McKnight, Kevin McCurdy.
Previous week's attendance: n/a
Meet Virg Kilpatrick: New Saugus Speedway Announcer
Virg Kilpatrick, Ventura County radio executive, will be the "man behind the mike" as we open the 1980 race season at Saugus Speedway.
Virg, sales manager for KAAP Radio in Ventura, has a solid background of broadcasting experience. He just completed a very successful season at Ventura Raceway calling speedway bike and 3/4 midget events and he'll be on hand again when they open their '80 season. His other credits include Ventura destruction derbies for the past two and a half years, part of the 78 Ventura speedway bike season and special events at Pearsonville and Antelope Valley Fairgrounds. He has also emceed many parades, beauty pageants, jazz festivals and has several hundred radio commercials to his credit.
Virg is married, wife's name is Pam, and they have two children, Karen, 12, and Robert, 10. They reside in Ventura.
Welcome, Virg, to Saugus Speedway, the Super Track, home of exciting stock car race action and home of the greatest race fans anywhere.
Trophy Queen: Roselyn Royce
Tonight's trophy queen, Roselyn Royce, is currently co-starring with Frank Sinatra Jr. in a dirt bike movie titled "Do it in the Dirt." She is also filming "The Retrievers," and both will be released in the spring.
In addition to movies, Roselyn has appeared in theatre and hosted a weekly television show, "In a Woman's World with Roselyn Royce."
She is an artist, fashion model, aircraft pilot, choreographer, disco dancer, equestrian and excel Is in public speaking. Other interests are motorcycling, skiing and wrestling. WRESTLING?
1979 REVIEW
Tru Cheek, John Covan and Roman Calczynski drove to divisional championships at Saugus Speedway in 1979. Cheek captured the crown in the newly formed Modified division, Covan won the Sportsman cup and Calczynski topped the Street Stocks. The championships were the first ever for each of these fine competitors.
Cheek, after scoring an opening night victory, led the points chase all the way and capped it off by winning the regular season-ending 100-lap Modified Grand Prix. Along the way he posted two other feature wins, four seconds and five thirds as he successfully fought off a late-season charge by '77 Champion Jim Robinson, who recorded five feature victories at the "Super Track." Robinson also holds the current qualifying record of 16:36 which he set on September 29th. Jim Inoslo, '68 champ, clocked 16:46 on opening night, and Dan Press, 1978 title holder, lowered it to 16:44 on May 19th, prior to Robinson's current record run.
Covan battled with Allen Thacker throughout most of the season in the Sportsman division, but Covan's consistent top-three finishes won him the crown, and Gary Johnson nosed past Thacker by winning the final Sportsman event, the 100-lap Grand Prix.
Calczynski racked up fourteen victories in feature races and scored ten dash wins to slip past Thacker on the final night of Street Stock action. Jon Christensen, Cindy Davar, Bruce Erickson, Ken Johnston, Chris Peedan, Greg Scates and Jim Smelzer also drove to feature wins in the very competitive division. Brad Miller won the Bill Killian Memorial Race, an event to honor the memory of the four-time Saugus Champion who lost his life in a highway truck accident in November of 1978.
Results from April 5, 1980
About Saugus Speedway
The future Saugus Speedway was built originally as a rodeo arena in 1927 by Roy Baker, brother of shoe magnate C.H. Baker.
Roy Baker purchased the 40-acre property east of Bouquet Junction in 1923 for the purpose of breeding and selling show and pleasure horses.
To that end he imported saddle brood mares from Kentucky and studded them with a pedigreed, chestnut-colored saddlebred stallion named Peavine McDonald (b. 1910),
which sired five pedigreed mares and four pedigreed colts between 1920 and 1936.
Baker advertised that he had 2,500 acres of grazing land and also offered training and boarding services for outside horses.
Probably to attract horse buyers to his ranch in faraway Saugus, Baker staged rodeos. Some references suggest he
built a 12,000-seat arena in 1924, but this is dubious. (Promoter Bob Anderson organized a local rodeo in 1924, but its exact location is unclear, and it wouldn't
have had grandtands.) Anderson did hold the annual rodeo on Baker's property in April 1926. That December,
Baker and Anderson started construction on a new stadium, complete with partially covered grandstand seating and a quarter-mile oval track.
When it opened May 1, 1927, it seated 18,000 fans, and thousands more had to be turned away for lack of room.
Over the next decade, ownership of the arena
would change hands three more times.
As with a majority of the American populace, Baker was hit hard financially by the Great Depression of 1929 and was forced
to sell the stadium to cowboy actor Hoot Gibson in 1930. Gibson continued to hold rodeos at the stadium and drew a Hollywood crowd
including famous actors such as William S. Hart, Harry Carey, Tom Mix, and John Wayne. He also used the stadium as a movie set
or leased it to other companies for film making.
But Gibson felt the effects of the Depression, as well. In September 1933 he appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom and pleaded poverty,
saying he had no assets with which to repay a $2,500 loan. He testified that he owned a one-third interest in Hoot Gibson Inc., which owned
the Saugus rodeo, and that it was in arrears.
In 1934, Gibson sold the stadium to Paul Hill, owner of the Western Livestock Stockyards, who continued to call it the Hoot Gibson Rodeo.
As with his predecessors, however, the stadium brought
Hill financial hardship when it was hit by the Great Flood of March 2, 1938. Heavy rains that year caused a river of water to flow down
Soledad Canyon and filled the ranch home and arena with mud and debris. As reported in the Los Angeles
Times, the "old buildings ... collapsed during the March floods" and the arena was built anew.
Nonetheless, Hill lost the ranch sometime after the April 1938 rodeo. According to Reynolds,
the property was repossessed by
the bank. In 1939, ownership passed to William Bonelli, and it was renamed Bonelli Stadium.
Bonelli, a professor of economics at Occidental College,
continued the annual rodeo tradition
for a number of years but introduced auto racing in 1939 on a more frequent schedule; ultimately auto racing became the primary draw and Bonelli
renamed the arena Saugus Speedway.
Occasional rodeos and circuses continued until at least the late 1960s, auto racing until 1995. The facility was sometimes used for
concerts before the grandstands were removed in 2012 (the originals had been replaced in 1955). The venue continues to host an outdoor swap meet.