attle in the late morning after passing through Bothell to the north. It was a citywide party that celebrated pressing the limits of human endurance. The Lake Hike’s first woman star, Bertha Woodward, was a poor laundry woman who won the women’s division and used the prize money to buy a house and move her two daughters out of an unpainted shack that, until then, had served as their home. This fascination with the bunion derbies reflected the optimism of the times. New technologies—cars, radios, electricity, airplanes and motion pictures—had profoundly reshaped society. The nation was crackling with growth and activity. Twentyseven million cars clogged roads that had been quiet at the start decade. This in turn set off a boom in road building and oil production. America was the world’s engine of prosperity after it helped win the First World War. Wages soared and the loosely regulated stock market boomed. The party seemed destined to go on forever—fueled by illegal booze in this time of Prohibition.
the mostly unpaved Route 66 across the American West. The men first faced the blast furnace of the Mojave Desert, then a brutal climb into the Arizona high country where they crossed the Continental Divide at 7,200 feet. From there, they ran across New Mexico, then through ankle-deep mud on unpaved roads
Seattle’s Bertha Woodward winning the women’s division of the Lake Hike. courtesy of the seattle star , june 15, 1929. in Texas before reaching better roads in Oklahoma. The four African American bunioneers had the added burden of facing a firestorm of hate from white Texans enraged that blacks would challenge whites in an integrated race in the segregated South. The bunioneers made up the rules of transcontinental racing as they went. The 55 men who survived to reach New York City had experienced a test of endurance that few of them could have imagined when they started the race in Los Angeles. The finishers were our first ironmen, true pioneers of ultramarathoning.
The 1929 race
Official Program of 1929 Bunion Derby. courtesy of john stone .
The 1928 Bunion Derby
I chronicled the first bunion derby in my 2007 book, titled Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America. On March 4, 1928, 199 men assembled in Los Angeles for an 84-day footrace across the nation. Few of the men had any training. Most observers believed that few if any of these “bunioneers” would reach the finish at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The first 500 miles of the race provided a brutal, gut-busting initiation to the rigors of daily ultramarathon racing as the runners followed
In my latest book, The 1929 Bunion Derby: Johnny Salo and the Great Footrace Across America, 43 veterans from the first race joined 34 rookie runners for the start of the second and last Bunion Derby. This time, race director Charley Pyle reversed course, and the men left New York for Los Angeles on March 31, 1929. As in the first derby, the men had come for prize money, chasing $25,000 for first place, $10,000 for second, with the remaining $25,000 spread between third and fifteenth place. The Bunion Derby had a simple set of rules: Run or walk on your own two feet and finish by midnight. Each day’s race was called a “stage race” with the men starting together then racing to the next designated town along the course, which was called the “con- Johnny Salo (107) with two other trol.” As the men bunioneers on Route 66, Oklahoma, finished the race, at the 1928 race. courtesy of el reno their times from the carnegie library. J U N E 2 014 • w w w. n w r u n n e r. c o m
NORTHWEST RUNNER
25