On eBay Now...Fred Comer Rockingham NH Board Track Injury Racing 1928 - Original Press Photo For Sale
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Fred Comer Rockingham NH Board Track Injury Racing 1928 - Original Press Photo:
$100.00
An original 8x10" antique photo (NOT a modern reprint) from the Marty Himes estate.Provenance: This photograph comes directly from the Marty Himes Racing Museum Collection, assembled over decades by Marty Himes - racer, restorer, and lifelong archivist of American racing. Every piece he preserved tells part of the story of motorsport’s rise from dirt tracks to the spectacle of the Indy 500. We acquired the majority of his photo collection after his passing. Many of his photos are extremely rare or even one of a kind.
Photo Overview
This 1928 press photograph captures a somber moment at the Rockingham Park board speedway in Salem, New Hampshire, where racing driver Fred Comer is being carried on a stretcher following a crash during the Columbus Day races. A tightly packed group of men in period suits, straw boaters, and fedoras assist in transporting the injured driver away from the track, the great wooden board banking of the speedway rising in the background. The urgency of the scene is unmistakable, with attendants and officials crowding around the stretcher as a photographer with a press camera watches from the left.
Captured by a photographer for The News in New York City and preserved from the Marty Himes Racing Museum Collection, this image documents the very real dangers of the high-speed board track era of American auto racing. The dramatic composition and the human intensity of the moment make this a compelling and historically significant piece of early motorsport photography.
Historical Notes
Fred Comer was one of the leading American Automobile Association championship dirt and board track drivers of the 1920s. Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire operated as a high-banked wooden board speedway during this period, one of the great and dangerous board tracks that defined early American Championship racing. Comer competed regularly on the AAA circuit alongside drivers such as Ralph Hepburn, Frank Lockhart, and Louis Meyer. Board track racing reached its peak in the mid to late 1920s before the enormous cost of maintaining the rapidly deteriorating wooden surfaces, combined with the frequency of horrific injuries and fatalities like the one shown here, brought the era to a close. By the early 1930s nearly all the great board speedways had been torn down or abandoned, and dirt tracks and paved ovals took their place. Fred Comer continued racing into the following years, his career emblematic of the fearless generation of drivers who raced the boards before safety innovations existed.
Condition
Please see scans of the image we have provided for the most accurate and complete state of the photo. Many of the photos in this collection are very old and have age related wear, chips, creases, curling, etc. Others are remarkably well maintained.