The 1929 Bunion Derby: Johnny Salo and the Great Footrace across America

1. Race Day: New York City to Elizabeth New Jersey, March 31, 1929

1 Race Day New York City to Elizabeth New Jersey, March 31, 1929 Day 1, 77 Men March 31, 1929. After a decade of peace and unprecedented economic expansion, Americans could look back on the 1920s with an understandable sense of pride. The United States had helped stop the carnage of the First World War and emerged as an industrial marvel. As the decade of the twenties dawned, constitutional amendments gave women the right to vote and outlawed the sale and distribution of alcohol, making Prohibition the law of the land.1 The country was richer and more prosperous than it had ever been, with annual incomes rising by 30 percent from 1921 to 1929.2 Key technologies—electricity, motion pictures, autos, and radios—had spread rapidly and profoundly and reshaped the country. Twenty-seven million cars clogged roads that were quiet at the start of the decade, which set off a boom in road construction and oil production.3 By race day, the stock market had reached stratospheric levels as money poured into Wall Street to purchase stocks, fueled by broker loans where an investor could put down from 10 to 20 percent of the stock purchase price and use the inflated value of his or her stocks as collateral.4 The cowboy humorist Will Rogers wrote that “it was a great game. All you had to do was to buy and wait till the next morning and just pick up the paper and see how much you made, in print.”5 President Herbert Hoover had been in office for less than a month. As a self-made millionaire , he symbolized bedrock American values of rugged individualism 2 • 1929 Bunion Derby and unyielding faith in the future. In just seven months, this optimism would turn to despair as the infamous stock market crash started America on its spiral into the Great Depression. In New York City, thousands of people were unaware of their dark future as they strolled in their Sunday best in and around Central Park on a sunny Easter Sunday afternoon. Spring was in the air. Baseball season would soon begin, and the great Babe Ruth would once again step up to the plate for the New York Yankees. Many of these strollers were attracted to Columbus Circle on the southwest corner of Central Park, where a seventy-seven-foot granite column supported a marble statue of Christopher Columbus and, wrote syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler, “A large number of males attired in underwear of various hues” was assembled.6 The runners, like the famous explorer, were seeking fame and fortune on their own westward journey as part of the Bunion Derby, the nickname for “C. C. Pyle’s Second Annual International-Trans-Continental Foot Race” across America. The wail of sirens from police motorcycles escorting the runners through the city and the large waving flags at the start attracted thousands of New Yorkers to the circle, bringing traffic to a standstill and engulfing Pyle’s seventy-seven runners in the crowd.7 A film taken of the start shows Charley Pyle in an open-air car, shouting instructions to his runners through a megaphone as they snake by in a thin line, an artery of runners moving through a mass of humanity.8 The curious crowd pushed and shoved its way to the starting line, and the police were powerless to control it.9 In this chaos, Charley’s opening ceremonies came unraveled , and he simply screamed instructions to begin the race. Will Rogers, a friend of the previous year’s winner, Andy Payne, had apparently been scheduled to begin the race with a gunshot, but that did not happen.10 With the race under way, the seventy-seven men began to weave through the crowd, with their police escorts blaring their sirens as they attempted to clear a path to the Hudson River ferries that would take the men to New Jersey. Two unidentified runners broke out of the crowd and crashed into a parked taxi. The rest weaved their way through dense crowds on onlookers.11 At several points along the course, patrons of 1. Cover from Official 1929 Program. Source: John Stone, private collection. 4 • 1929 Bunion Derby speakeasies rushed to the doors, holding their steins aloft in a Prohibitionera salute.12 Harry Abramowitz, a tiny New Yorker and 1928 derby finisher, reached the 23rd Street ferry first, covering the one and...