Welcome Back to Euclid Beach Park

   The Great American Racing Derby was a horse racing ride that sat almost in the center of ride attractions found at Euclid Beach Park. This large horse racing ride was located just to the east of the "Carrousel". The building in which the ride was located, was 114 feet in diameter and had a dome shaped roof that was open to sky in the very center. This let in plenty of daylight and allowed grass to grow in the very center of this "racetrack" and created a very open and spacious setting.

   Unlike a carrousel, the 64 horses on this ride were not suspended from above by any type of overhead mechanical equipment. The horses, paired in sets of four, were each attached to a post that appeared to simply come up out of the floor. Yet the horses were not fixed in place. As the ride was in operation, the horses moved up and down as well as forward and back within each set of four.

   The floor of this ride was a large moving platform. This platform or "table" (as I believe it was called) was right at ground level. (No steps or ramps were needed to step onto the ride.) This meant that the machinery needed to make this ride function was located in a basement/crawl space beneath the platform or "table". (To my knowledge, the Racing Derby was the only ride in Euclid Beach Park to have a basement.)

   I was in this concrete crawlspace once and was surprised to discover six tracks (much like roller coaster tracks) down there. These tracks were made up of six or eight layers of wood, laminated on top of each other and topped with a strip of steel. The outer and innermost of the six tracks were flat. These were the two tracks on which the moving table, with its steel wheels, rolled. The middle four tracks were the tracks on which the horses rode. These tracks were laminated in such a way as to create small hills and valleys. This caused the horses to go up and down as the followed the contour of the track below.

   I regret that, on my tour of the Racing Derby's basement, I did not look at the mechanics that made the horses move back and forth. The ride operator controlled the forward and back movement of the horses and rumor has it that pretty, young ladies were often fortunate to have the winning horses.

   The ride was cable driven. A cable was stretched around the outside perimeter of the table eventually reaching an electric motor then back to the table. The cable was then spliced together to form a continuous loop. This cable needed to be replaced every few years. The park maintenance staff would install the new cable and then a professional cable splicer would be brought in to make the final splice to form the continuous loop.

   I was told that there were well over one hundred grease fittings underneath the ride that required regular, ongoing attention. Walter Williams, a member of the maintenance staff, over saw the maintenance of the Racing Derby from its arrival at Euclid Beach Park in 1921 until it was dismantled and moved to Cedar Point  (Sandusky, Ohio) in the fall of 1966.