William T. Muir - Kentucky Champion

In the early days of auto racing it makes perfect sense that there was a paucity of driving stars. The sport had only just begun and in 1906 there were many in remote areas of the United States who had yet to lay eyes on a car. The idea of organized races had hardly been around long enough to establish household names.
 
Imagine the shock when two of those rare breed, Earl Kiser and Webb Jay, were injured so severely both retired from the sport when it was at a fragile, formative state in 1905.
 

Jay survived a life-threatening concussion in a time when brain surgery was both primitive and employed only under the most desperate circumstances. Kiser's issue was more cut and dried. One of his legs had to be amputated after being crushed. Prosthetics were rudimentary and adaptations to car controls were pretty much unheard of augmentations.
 
The go-to driver for name recognition was the indomitable Barney Oldfield. Promoters like Carl Fisher put him at the top of the list to recruit rights to his broadsides. Still, in May 1906 at the inception of that year's northern racing season creating rivalries was down right hard. Fisher struggled to build up the reputations of the drivers he could pit against the cigar-chomping Oldfield for his Decoration Day races at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
 
Probably the most creditable was "Jap" Clemens who had set the world 24 hour distance record the previous autumn. Adventurist Charles "C.A." Coey was promoted but eventually his car was a no-show. Paul Kaiser of Peerless was another name as was William T. Muir from Kentucky.
 
The problem with all of these characters is that they lacked the credentials - and probably the skill - of Oldfield who is still remembered by historians today as a hall-of-fame driver. What his opponents did not lack was the spirit to chase the adrenaline rush. Coey, for example, was also a balloonist and in 1909 competed in the first national championship balloon races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
 
Muir is interesting. Fisher billed him alternatively as "the Kentucky Champion" and the "Amateur Champion." Apparently Muir had won an amateur contest in a short sprint at a race meet at New York's Morris Park. He had also diced with Oldfield only to be nosed out in another sprint race at a track in Lexington, Kentucky just a week earlier. This was the golden age of Barnum & Bailey and such a performance was more than sufficient to earn such an exalted title.
 
Check out a rare image of young Mr. Muir. If you happen to know more, please tell us. Be prepared, though, we will turn around and share that information with the world at no charge. That's just the way we are with respect to auto racing history at First Super Speedway. Click thru and see..