Saturday 10th October 1908

The first Founders’ Cup Race was held in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (US), was won by George Robertson in a Locomobile. Philadelphia’s 200-mile Fairmount Park Motor Race, organized by the Quaker City Motor Club for the city’s annual Founder’s Week from 1908 to 1911. Unlike most of the more well-known automobile races of the day, the Fairmount Park Motor Race allowed only American-built cars on stock chassis to compete. The first of the races was the most heavily attended race ever, with 500,000 spectators. In that first year, 16 cars competed, with George Robertson taking the win in Irving Morse’s 40hp Locomobile. Robertson won the event again in 1909 (though in a Simplex), and both years he took home a 31-pound, 3-foot sterling silver trophy, engraved by artists at Bailey, Banks and Biddle, topped with a figure of William Penn and then valued at $1,000. He also happened to take home $2,500, quite the purse for the time.