Get involved
To sponsor, build or race in next year’s Derby Downs at Redoubt Soccer Complex off Bonny Oaks Drive, contact Michael Stewart at 423-596-7726.
The history of the National Soap Box Derby has a strong Chattanooga connection.
Dayton Daily News photographer Myron E. Scott started an impromptu race for 19 boys in that Ohio city in 1934. Interest mushroomed, and the next year 34 cities including Chattanooga entered the Dayton race. Three hundred sixty two boys with their homemade cars constructed of “orange crates, sheet tin, wagon and baby buggy wheels” lined up.
The Chattanooga Times, Newton Chevrolet and Hamilton Chevrolet were sponsors. The local race course first started at the Bachman Tunnel and sloped west to Dodds Avenue. A crowded finish area during the 1934 preliminaries prompted officials to move the race course to Wilcox Tunnel sloping east and ending on a practically level space of more than a half mile. Sixty homemade gravity-powered vehicles participated.
Chattanooga’s first winner in the 12-15 age category was Claude Alexander Jr. of Signal Mountain. Although having the fastest times in the Dayton derby with his “Flash No. 1” racer, he was declared the runner-up under the handicap system based on speeds in earlier time trials. Claude completed the course in 55.2 seconds but with a 4.5 second handicap, finished 1.3 seconds behind the winner, Robert Turner of Muncie, Ind. A crowd of 50,000 fans viewed that derby. Alexander’s second-place finish earned him a trip to the Century of Progress Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago.