Callicoon Sports Car Races

What? You’ve never heard of the Callicoon Races? Ridiculous! You’ve heard of Watkins Glen, Bridgehampton, Elkhart Lake, Put-in-Bay and even Brynfan Tyddyn. But maybe not the races near Callicoon, New York. They were held, just once, in 1953 on a long 8.5 mile course on the public roads only a 3-hour drive from Watkins Glen. It’s in that little corner where three states meet: NY, PA and NJ — not far from Port Jervis.

They were, technically, the 1953 Sullivan County Sport Car Races, and entrants included Fred Allen’s MG, David Ash in his MG Special, Lake Underwood in an MG (before he started racing Porsches), Bill Wonder, Tony Pompeo in his Siata, Al Garthwaite in the OSCA, Charlie Schott in his much-modified Jaguar, Gordon McKenzie in his first race and Erwin Goldschmidt in the #99 Keift MG. The 8.5-mile course (a tenth of a mile longer than Le Mans!) was mostly a macadam surface with a 2-mile unpaved section and even some gravel on the two sharpest turns. “The course ran around the base of a mountain,” Bill Wonder recalls. “It had steep hills, narrow bridges and concrete abutments.”