![]() ![]() Percival Whittall - whose family, according to the American Carpet and Upholstery Journal of 1910 (not making that up) ran one of the country’s largest carpet manufacturers and had a palatial carpet showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York - won Category One in a Pierce Arrow at two minutes and 15 seconds. The cars were broken into categories, based on the size of the cars and their anticipated ability to climb the hill quickly. One woman always took shelter behind a parasol which she carried.” The Worcester Gazette reported “Some women, especially, were more or less terrified when the autos came tearing along, and would seek the shelter of a stone wall or hide behind a tree of large girth. It was the most exciting thing to hit Worcester until the 1950s, when a twister tore through the center of town. The Worcester Gazette reported that more than 7,000 people attended, jostling to see Pierce-Arrows, Stanleys, Stevens-Duryeas, Franklins, Pope-Toledos and Mercedes tear up the steep grade, which was then unpaved. Stevens of Rome, New York, the owner of the Darracq that won the Vanderbilt Cup that year, and himself the holder of the Dead Horse Hill record in 1905. Marriott, who held the current world’s record for the both the kilometer and the mile, S.B. By the following May, the Boston Evening Transcript published a story that noted “he entry list…includes some of the most famous drivers in this country and some of the best-known cars of both American and foreign make.”ĭrivers competing that year included Fred H. The first Dead Horse Hill Climb commenced in the spring of 1905, sponsored by the Worcester Automobile Club. “The hill is just one mile in length and varies in grade from 8.3 to 12 percent, so that the machines that cover the distance will prove their worth for New England roads.” - The Automobile, May 10, 1906. They seemed to forget that a vertical curve might make as long a sweep as a horizontal one.” ![]() ![]() ![]() They went over hills because builders had learned that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points. No matter what be in the way, the road must not turn to the right nor the left. Why the hell anyone would cut a road straight up a hill when all you had at your disposal had four legs is detailed in Jewett’s 1879 History of Worcester County: “About the beginning of this century there seems to have been a passion for making straight roads. From the base of the hill at 539.5 feet, you can see how it got its name. In fact, George Street is still home to a bicycle hill climb known as the George Street Bike Challenge for Major Taylor, a 500-foot, 16-percent grade quad-buster named for the 1899 world’s champion bicycle racer who used to train there.ĭead Horse Hill is on the outskirts of town, headed toward Leicester, on what was the old Worcester and Stafford (Connecticut) Turnpike. Worcester’s nickname is the City of Seven Hills, and if you’ve ever ridden a bicycle around it, you’d know why. It was here that between 19, hundreds of the world’s best drivers and the fastest cars came to compete. It lies about three miles from City Hall, and as you descend from the top, shows the sprawling city, the second largest in New England. Dead Horse Hill is a one-mile beast of an incline on Stafford Street in the gritty post-industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts. ![]()
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